Dale Earnhardt Jr. says he and new crew chief Pete Rondeau have professional respect for each other. Credit: Turner Sports Interactive

Rondeau walks softly, carries big driver

Mild-manner crew chief prepared for high-profile assignment

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- So who the heck is this guy Pete Rondeau? Where is he from? What's he like? How did he get this high-profile job of crew chief for Dale Earnhardt Jr.?

And how do you pronounce his last name anyway?

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That's Rondeau, as in cookie dough. Making cookies would be an easier job than being Dale Earnhardt's crew chief, that's for sure.

But here Rondeau is, ready to start 2005 in one of the most pressure-packed positions in NASCAR.

Rondeau was born in Maine, and drove stock cars himself for 18 years. He built his own cars and had his own chassis business before moving South about six years ago.

Rondeau started with Jasper Motorsports, serving as car chief for the No. 77 team before moving to DEI in 2002 to work as Michael Waltrip's crew chief.

Last October, in a shakeup with Waltrip's team, Rondeau replaced Slugger Labbe as crew chief. But more shakeups were on the way when the No. 8 and No. 15 teams essentially swapped crews.

And now comes the hard part.

In many ways, Rondeau is the antithesis of Earnhardt Jr. While the driver can be vocal and boisterous, the crew chief is subdued and quiet.

While Earnhardt Jr. is prone to profanity, Rondeau has the vocabulary of a schoolteacher. While Junior is excitable and fiery, Rondeau is calm and cool.

While Earnhardt Jr. is the new public face of NASCAR, Rondeau is the old one. While Junior is Hollywood, Rondeau is middle America.

How the pairing works will be one of the most watched subjects of 2005, as the popular Earnhardt Jr. enters a new phase of his career: post-Eurys. Tony Eury Sr. and Tony Eury Jr. have worked with Earnhardt Jr. since the Busch Series days, when Dale Earnhardt paired the father and son with his own son.

But changes were afoot in the offseason, as DEI switched Earnhardt Jr.'s crew with Waltrip. Gone were the Eurys, with Rondeau taking over as crew chief for the No. 8 team.

Rondeau has come a long way in a short time, from DEI engineer to crew chief for NASCAR's poster boy.

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"I knew there would be a lot of outside pressure," Rondeau said. "But as a rule, I'm not willing to put a lot of pressure on myself to do this kind of stuff. I'll just get off course if I do that. I don't want to get off course."

That's about as in-depth as Rondeau likes to get. Few words, few sentences.

But don't make him repeat anything. That's about the only thing that gets to Rondeau.

"Yeah, I don't scream and yell too much," Rondeau said.

What makes him scream?

Rondeau thought for several seconds before answering.

"Doing things twice when you don't need to," Rondeau said. "We've surrounded ourselves with good people, and that very seldom happens. And even then, I'm not going to scream at someone for that. We're just going to make sure we learn from it."

So when you listen to Junior and Rondeau talk on the radio, they'll actually be talking. The respect level goes both ways when family isn't involved, as was the case with Earnhardt Jr. and the Eurys. Not that Junior didn't respect them, but sometimes you treat your family worse than you treat other people.

"I think I have a lot of maturing to do as far as working with someone else that I was forced to respect, forced to talk to in a certain manner," Earnhardt Jr. said. "I could talk to Tony. Jr. however the hell I want. I could say anything to him because I knew the next day we were still cousins.

"I put myself in this situation to try to be a better person and little more of a professional. I was a good race car driver but I wasn't necessarily a professional on the radio all the time. That will be a good situation for me."

And perhaps a level of professionalism, a business-like approach, will serve to enhance performance.

"One of the things I like about Pete is that he gives me a lot of respect," Earnhardt Jr. said. "When we talk, we listen. He has a similar demeanor as I do in and around the car and at the shop and away from the track.

"It's been a really nice offseason. With the change we made it took a lot of stress away from me. It's kind of difficult to explain it. I don't want to give the opinion that I got more than I had before or that I got away from problems.

"I think we'll do OK. I think Pete's got a lot. He doesn't talk much, and it's hard to see how much depth he has, but he's really been paying attention a lot from last year. There's a lot more going on in his head than he let's on."

One would hope so, for what comes out of Rondeau's mouth isn't much. A few examples:

Rondeau says he's not stressing over getting immediate results with the No. 8 Chevrolet. Credit: Turner Sports Interactive

On his biggest challenge as crew chief: "Giving Dale Jr. what he needs." On why he quit driving: "When I started taking money off the table at the race."

On dealing with the attention that surrounds Earnhardt Jr.: "It's intense with the fans and the media. I'm just trying to keep that separate from my job."

On the pressure of defending the Daytona 500: "Yeah, that's OK. It's not like we're expected to, but if we do, we do, and that's going to be great. But if we don't, there are 37 more races."

On what happens if the No. 8 team gets off to a bad start and the critics get vocal: "I'm plenty prepared for that. It's going to take awhile. If we hit it right off the bat, then we do. If we don't, that's not going to be a big thing for me. This is going to be a long-term relationship, and we're going to build toward it."

Whoa, that's almost a mouthful.

But perhaps that's just what Earnhardt Jr. needs. With all the attention and all that's said and written about him, maybe he needs someone to look him in the eye and tell him what he needs to hear, not what he wants to hear.

Expect Rondeau not to mince any words. Or many words, for that matter. "He just expects me to be straight-forward with him and he'll be straight-forward with me," Rondeau said. "And that's going to be a big thing for us. I've worked real hard at doing that also with the guys. I've told them to be real straight-forward with him and let him know everything he wants to know.

"Our relationship is going to be better if we're straight up with each other."