Conversation: Tony Eury Jr.

BRISTOL, Tenn. -- Tony Eury Jr. is the final decision-maker on pit road for Team Budweiser, not to mention Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s first cousin.

That can make for some volatility when opinions vary, but nothing typical brother-to-brother bickering won't produce. And they may as well be brothers. Theirs is a relationship built on respect, admiration and -- more than anything else -- blood.

Eury sat down with NASCAR.com's Marty Smith to talk success, celebrity and one of the most unique relationships in NASCAR.

Let's start by discussing your relationship with Dale Jr. Listening to you guys on the radio, you'd swear y'all hate each other.

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Haha, yeah. We have a relationship like two brothers. It's an "in the moment"- type deal. He's in a tense situation and I'm in a tense situation and everybody's got a lot of pressure on us to do well.

And we put pressure on each other to do well. One doesn't give up on the other, basically. We have words on the radio every now and then. Half of them we try to overlook, and sometimes it's just the heat of the moment.

Has it ever gotten so heated you went to blows?

No, it'd never come to that. If it did, it'd be for fun. We respect each other a lot. Sometimes it comes across the wrong way, but it's nothing really serious. It's just like you'd do your own brother.

Junior says you have one of the best, if not the best, mind on pit road. How would you grade yourself overall, and what's your best attribute?

I'd grade myself as being average. I think a great person is a guy who surrounds himself with great people and I think that's what we've done. We've got a lot of great people here to help me.

One man can't do the job. Ten heads is always better than one -- that's the way I've always thought about it and always will. We've just got a real good team and a lot of people that can focus on their area to make it great."

You guys have accomplished so much in such a short time. What, in your opinion, is your most memorable achievement to date?

Ummmm, other than Speedweeks -- that was pretty awesome. That reminded me of Big E's days when he went down there and dominated everything. But we had our bad luck.

So I guess The Winston, when we won there (in 2000). That was probably the most memorable, because I really wanted to win that race pretty bad, and to go there, set a goal and go do it, that's really special.

Pretty good pay day, too.

Oh yeah. It was a lot of fun. And Big E being there, that was a bonus.

When you and Dale Jr. were playing G.I. Joe's at family reunions did you ever imagine he'd be such a huge icon?

	Dale Earnhardt Jr.

Yeah, in a way. As good as his daddy was you say, "All right, he'll be a good driver." And if he didn't have any talent, he'd still make it as a race car driver.

But he's impressed us all a lot. He's maturing every day and the way I look at, he ain't even been driving a race car but five years now. So, the amount of stuff he's done in that time frame is just excellent.

Is his celebrity ever a distraction to the team?

Last year it was. You couldn't even get between him and the fans, really. This year, with the progress that NASCAR's made with the Hot Pass and stuff, it's really helped us out quite a bit.

Used to be, a lot of teams were parked beside us and would be like, "Man, get away from us," because we'd cause so much havoc around their car. But we've gotten accustomed to it, and the way things have rolled out this year with the Hot Passes, it's great from our point of view. It's not so good for the fans, but it just helps us do what we need to do better."

You guys had to have gotten in some trouble as youngsters. Ever get your tail whooped by your Dad or Big E?

Ohhh yeah. Pops, Tony Sr., he's grabbed both of us a few times. It's vice versa, too. Dale grabbed me a couple times. Everybody likes to get in a little mischief.

I certainly do. You seem to have taken a more active role in the decision-making process this year. Is that truly the case?

Oh yeah, very much so. But I'm not here to take Pops' job, to be the crew chief. I really don't care to. Sooner or later, down the road, I'll get it. It's just a title for me. But yeah, he's given the responsibility of making more calls.

	The pressure on the Budweiser team is still intense, says Eury Jr., but it has lightened slightly. Credit: Autostock

That's one reason why I quit changing tires last year. The guys on the team wanted me up on the box, to be more active. The pressure this year is a whole lot less than it was last year. People might think not, but I was doing five jobs last year, and trying to do five good jobs. This year, I've only got two or three jobs and I can do them really well.

We actually discussed that last week in Track Smack. A crew chief, these days, has to delegate to achieve success.

Yeah, you can't. You have to have key people in every place, because we can only do so much. Your brain just starts going away from you. You can't think about things the right way.

If you've got people that can take care of certain zones on the team, where you can relax and not have to worry about it -- you know he's doing just as good a job as you would do, or better, then you don't have so much to worry about.

What track is the easiest to prepare a car for, and why?

I guess it'd probably be a mile-and-a-half, like Charlotte or something. You've just got have a really decent downforce car and just get the aero package together when you get there. When you go to Martinsville, you've got to worry about brake blowers and the brakes staying underneath it and all that stuff.

Then you go to speedways and you have to worry about having the best body, the most horsepower, all that stuff. So I'd say Charlotte and Atlanta, places like that, are fairly easy for me.

When you guys entered Winston Cup, the pressure was immense. Back-to-back Busch champions and the highest-profile sponsor in Budweiser. Was there ever a point when you were afraid it may all come apart?

Yeah, it kind of got nerve-wracking in the middle of 2000. This team here, we were sitting there winning six and seven races a year, then you come back and your best finish is 18th.

	Despite a disappointing ending, Eury Jr. says Speedweeks was one of the Budweiser team's greatest accomplishments. Credit: Autostock

The team went down a little bit. Your self-esteem, you're like "Do I know what I'm doing?"-sort of deal. But after we won The Winston and won Richmond, we were like, "Hey, you know, we are with the big dogs. We can win." That pumped us up.

Just learning the Cup Series and learning everything you have to know with the Cup car, it did get stressful there for a while.

What would you say to the people that think Dale Jr's hectic schedule away from the track detracts from his performance on it?

Well, yeah, last year he did like 90 appearances. So, it's crazy. A driver, he's like us. We work constantly, so we might get one day off a week. Well, the driver is the same way.

It's not like, when he gets out of the car on Sunday, he's gone until next Thursday or Friday. He's got a seven-day-a-week job, just like us. He's just dealing with the media and doing commercials and what have you. He actually travels more than we do, matter of fact.

You guys have jumped from 38th to fourth in the Winston Cup standings in just three weeks. Is Team Budweiser a championship contender?

Yes. I think we are. The way we look at it, we'd be leading the points if we hadn't had an alternator failure. So yeah, we're wanting to be there. This is the first time we've been in the top five in points, so that's got us all really pumped up.

And the way we've been running each and every week, we just don't want to get snake-bitten here at Bristol. If we can make it through Bristol, we'll really have a shot.

You were discussing the alternator failure at Daytona. That was one of the most dominant Speedweeks performances by a single team ever. How much did that hurt you guys to have arguably the best car, then have that problem?

It hurt us pretty good. I honestly thought Thursday after we won the 125s that it was too good to be true. Something's going to happen because things have been going too smooth. Unfortunately, that happened. It was a little ironic.

That's one thing we check every race morning and it worked fine. Matter of fact, when we took it home Monday, we had the same alternator and put it on the chassis dyno and it worked again. But it was a heat-related problem. It absorbed the heat, then it'd quit.

That really freaked us out, though. We were like, "All right, the monkeys are working somewhere," but after hearing all the stuff about us cheating and stuff there, we're just looking forward to going to Talladega and stepping it up and showing the people that we can run like that again.