Whenever new members join the family that is the No. 88 Chevrolet team of Dale Earnhardt Jr. at Hendrick Motorsports, crew chief Tony Eury Jr. welcomes them with a stern warning.

Soaring expectations

Dale Earnhardt Jr. admits he was apprehensive going into last season. But this year, he says the team must perform when the stakes are high.

• More

"You guys are going to get more attention, you're going to get talked about more, when you do wrong you're going to get that magnified. When you do good, that's going to get magnified, too -- but you've got to be able to take both, because you're going to get both. It's not going to be one or the other. Both of 'em are coming, so just be prepared," Eury said he tells the new recruits.

If anyone knows about all that, it should be Eury. The two Juniors not only are cousins, but they have been longtime companions at the race track. They spent eight seasons together at Dale Earnhardt Inc., the first six with Eury as Earnhardt's car chief and the last two with Eury serving as crew chief for the No. 8 Chevy Earnhardt used to drive.

They moved to Hendrick together last year, along with high expectations. They started strong, winning both the Budweiser Shootout and Gatorade Duel non-points events during season-opening Daytona Speedweeks.

But after winning at Michigan last June to break a 76-race winless streak, and spending most of the first half of the season second in the standings, the Juniors faded in the second half of the season. They didn't win another race and eventually dropped all the way to 11th in the final standings after faltering badly down the stretch in the Chase for the Sprint Cup championship.

Much of the blame for the swoon was laid at Eury's toolbox by fans and media -- if not by Earnhardt, who continues to say he stands by his crew chief. And no one likes to spread the blame for Earnhardt's shortcomings like the faithful of Junior Nation.

"Well, I've tried to put that to rest. I've tried and tried and tried. I give up, really, on putting it to rest," Earnhardt said.

"I feel so bad for Tony Jr. because he's just trying to make a living. He never asked for this. I don't know if I would be as strong as he is, to put up with all the criticism he has to put up with. I don't think I would be."

Eury said he is fine and he understands that it comes with the territory.

"Most of the time I'm doing all right. You're always going to have criticism. I just try to take it as constructive criticism," said Eury, who has been in charge on the pit box for only two of Earnhardt's 18 career Cup wins. "One thing I've always said is if you give 110 percent, that's all that matters. I've really only got two people that I need to make happy -- and that's Dale Jr. and Rick Hendrick. As long as they're happy with the job I'm doing, I feel like I'm doing my job.

"If they aren't happy, I would hope that they would have enough respect for me to come up and tell me they don't think I'm doing my job. A lot of it that's out there on the Internet or whatever, you just don't read it and don't worry about it."

Like Earnhardt, Eury said he expects better results from the No. 88 team in 2009.

"I think we're getting better and better the longer we're in this deal together. When he first stepped into the [88] car, I think he had some jitterbugs about how it was going to be around Jimmie [Johnson] and how it was going to be around Jeff [Gordon], and some things like that," Eury said. "And I'm still learning my way around here, too. We're still bringing in some people that we think might be able to help us out in certain situations.

"I'm just looking forward to getting started. I think this year is going to be better than last year, and I think the whole team is starting to gel together. I'm really looking forward to it. I'm ready to go."

Earnhardt admitted he was frustrated by the way last season's high hopes gradually faded into the sunset without the end results to match them. He also sounded like he was more than a little mystified by it.

"We threw away probably two or three races there in the first half of the season when we were running well enough to win. The second half of the season, we never really were around to compete for wins. We had a few good runs, but we weren't up in the top five consistently like we were the first half of the season," Earnhardt said.

"The first half of the season, we were leading, running in the top five every week, doing a real good job in the points. But then that just sort of went away."

As it went away, the criticism of Eury and the entire team intensified.

"I don't get too bothered by it," Earnhardt said. "I don't really mind criticism coming from the fans. It's tougher when it comes from the media, because it just makes you wonder. It's hard coming from a reporter or a certain individual, because the fans trust you guys [in the media] to give them the truth and a good story, and normally they believe everything you write.

"But coming from the fans, you know you can't please everybody. You just try to be yourself. You don't know if that's going to work or not. I can handle the criticism of the driver, because I'm having a pretty good time. But sometimes I wonder whether Tony Jr. is always having a good time -- and half the time, he's probably not because we're not running the way he wants. And he takes that personally."

Eury insisted that he still has fun -- most of the time, anyway.

"When it becomes not fun for me anymore, then I think I'll go look to do something else," he said. "But as long as I'm having fun doing it, I'll keep doing it. The day I don't, I'll quit."

He said he has some goals in mind for 2009 that hopefully will quiet his and the team's many critics.

"You always set your goals high. Basically, you just want to do better than you did last year. I think we had the chance to win three or four races last year, and we only won one of those. The first thing I'd like to do is fix those and win the ones we're in position to win," he said. "And definitely we want to have a better Chase. First we want to make the Chase again, and then we want to make sure we have a better Chase than we had last year."

Meanwhile, he insists he can take the heat so he'll stay in the kitchen -- or in this case, on top of Earnhardt's pit box.

"Nothing has surprised me as far as the attention we get as a team or I get as an individual because it's been like that since Day One," Eury said. "Everything has been magnified since he was back in the Busch [Series] days. You kind of get immune to it, and used to it.

"You know if you have a bad pit stop, they're going to wear you out about it. If someone else has one, it's not as big a deal. And that's just part of the game. That's part of being with the most popular driver, taking it on the chin sometimes. That's what I tell our guys when I bring 'em in here."