Tech Q&A: Tony Eury

July 13, 2001
1:04 PM EDT (1704 GMT)

Tony Eury engineered driver Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s No. 8 Budweiser Chevrolet to his first NASCAR Winston Cup victory of the season in the series’ most recent race, the Pepsi 400 at Daytona International Speedway.

Tony Eury

In addition, Eury, with his son, car chief Tony Eury Jr., was also responsible for preparing the Dale Earnhardt, Inc., Chevrolets that Earnhardt Jr. drove to three victories in his rookie season, including two point race wins and his wildly popular breakthrough in The Winston All-Star race.

Following the Pepsi 400, Eury sat down with NASCAR.com’s Dave Rodman to discuss set-up issues for this weekend’s inaugural Winston Cup event at the new Chicagoland Speedway in Joliet, Ill.

Q: Have you had an opportunity to test at the Chicagoland Speedway and if you have not, in going to a new race track for the first time what is the most important thing you have to look at in terms of set-up?

TE: Being as how everybody is so close in the garage's -- as close as they are -- there’s a lot of people who have tested there and a lot of people have told us what they ran, and in the area of what they ran.

With the open practice day we had Thursday, and since we only get seven tests this season, we took those four or five hours that they gave us for free and worked out our set-ups from that. That should enable us to come in Friday and get ready to qualify and we should be OK.

Those tests are so important. We are going to do Kansas the same way (the similarly styled Kansas Speedway outside Kansas City, Kan., where the Winston Cup Series is scheduled to race for the first time in September). We’re gonna take that early day that NASCAR is gonna give us and use that test session somewhere else.

Q: Where does your focus rest when you come to a track for the first time? Do you go with something that’s worked at a similar race track or do you throw some wild stuff at the car?

TE: You kind of go off of what you know. You go off of the banking and the speed you carry there. By looking at those numbers you kind of get an idea what the race track is gonna need and you just kind of work from there. It’s not really hard to figure out. If you get your shock travels figured and get your gearing and stuff right; you can catch it pretty quick.

Q: In terms of this new tire package and going to a new race track with that package, what is the most critical thing to be attentive to, to get your set-up right?

TE: The biggest problem we’re having with the new tire is that it doesn’t have any grip. That is what NASCAR has asked Goodyear to do. It’s not something that they’re doing, but they’ve been asked to do that to try to slow the cars down.

They’ve narrowed the tire up -- it’s a little narrower than it used to be and it’s rounder. The compound is harder. They’ve done all that just trying to get the speed out of the cars, and a lot of the race tracks that we’ve been to, the tires just won’t hold.

The cars are just running too fast for the tires that’s on ‘em and you get that four-wheel slide. There’s really not a whole lot you can do about it. It’s made the shock man’s job that much harder, because he’s the one that’s got to fix that problem. The springs usually won’t fix it -- it’s always in the shock package, most of the time.

Q: How does Dale Jr.’s driving style work with this new tire package that you have to use this season?

TE: I think what it did is it evened up all the drivers in the garage area. Bobby Labonte and Tony Stewart, they had the handle on the tires that we ran last year, there’s no doubt about it and (this year) they’re not happy about them changing it. I don’t blame them. If I was running as good as they were I wouldn’t have been happy either. This tire just threw everybody back. All your notes are no good anymore and everybody is back equal again.

It has showed up all year long. There are different people running up front. Some people are hitting it and some are not. The Gibbs teams haven’t run like they did last year. If they hadn’t changed the tire, they’d probably be dominating this deal right now, as good as they were at the end of the year.

I think it’s evened the competition up in the garage. Some people are starting to get a handle on it and there are some people over here who STILL haven’t got it and half the season is over. Sooner or later, somebody is gonna get it and they are gonna dominate just like they (Labonte and Stewart) did (last year, when Labonte won the championship and Stewart won a series leading six races).