Changes to No. 88 team bring some concerns for Dale Jr. – Nascar

A year ago this time, Dale Earnhardt Jr. was about to set sail on his 16th full-time season in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series as the defending Daytona 500 winner, coming off his most successful season in a decade. With a totally new, rookie crew chief in Greg Ives.

What followed in 2015 could be described as “knocking it out of the park” (three wins, career-high 22 top-10 finishes), but the Hendrick Motorsports driver is actually a little more anxious about his No. 88 Chevrolet team heading into 2016 after the transitions it underwent over this past offseason. Of the team’s six full-time pit crew members, only three (tire carriers Rowdy Harrell and Dustin Lineback, and jackman Nick Covey) were on the No. 88 team for all of last season.

“One of the things that is a concern for us was we had some people moving around,” Earnhardt told NASCAR.com Monday during a tour of ESPN. “I lost my lead engineer (Kevin Meendering), who went to crew chief at JR Motorsports. That guy was key to our team, key to our performance and speed.” 

Insert Tim O’Brien.

RELATED: No. 88 team names new lead engineer

“So we’ve got a new guy,” Earnhardt said. “Don’t know nothing about Tim. I know he’s an engineer. I don’t know if he’s great. So excited to see that and to get going, hoping Tim’s going to be great. Hoping I’m going to be going, ‘Man, Tim! I’m so glad you’re here!’ 

“We got a couple other guys that are new on the team and some young guys in new positions, so there’s a little bit more turnover than usual and that makes me nervous, I guess, because this team has to jel. One guy can screw it up. One guy can ruin it, even if he’s great at his job, but if his attitude is not good and everybody doesn’t like being around him. I think we’ll be OK. I trust Greg. He makes all of those decisions and we’re going to be in great shape.”

Ives’ decision-making was among the most talked about facets of Junior’s 2015 campaign, often helping the No. 88 make up spots with crucial pit stop decisions and putting his driver in position to compete for wins — even when the driver, himself, figured they’d have no shot.

Clearly, the two are on the same page when Earnhardt’s hands are on the steering wheel, and Ives has a headset on.

But it’s the moments when the duo is face-to-face, in a non-racing setting that the 26-time premier series winner thinks they need to improve on to make it over the hump and take home a first Cup title.

“Me and Greg, still even today are learning how to communicate on a personal level. We can go to the track and be like ‘Greg, it’s loose. Let’s work on it.’ We can be mechanical and robotic in our work throughout the weekend, but it’s the ‘Hey man, how are the kids? Your little girl was in a talent show, what was that like?’,” said Earnhardt, who will start second in Sunday’s 58th running of the Daytona 500 (1 p.m. ET, FOX, MRN, Sirius XM NASCAR Radio.)

“To share those moments where we start to build this really real friendship is … we’re going to get better at that. We will get better at that, but it’s starting to get better. That’s important to the relationship that we have and that we want to do good for each other.” 

If you’ve ever come across Ives in passing or seen him on TV, the differences between he and Earnhardt’s last crew chief, the jovial Steve Letarte (now an NBCSN analyst), are stark.

It’s all business, all the time for Ives.

“He’s a racer and he puts racing first, I think,” Earnhardt said. “It’s good for me, but it’s probably not good for the wife and kids. He does really good at what it appears to be and what it really is in reality is a little bit different. He works really hard. He doesn’t sleep. Let’s say that. He works really hard to be there for his wife and kids, but he’s hard on himself.”

It’s paying off, and if Earnhardt’s Speedweeks feats thus far are any indication, the best may be yet to come for the No. 88 team.