Hendrick is '100 percent' behind crew chief Eury Jr.

The pairing of Junior and Junior isn't going anywhere.

Car owner Rick Hendrick said he fully backs the combination of driver Dale Earnhardt Jr. and crew chief Tony Eury Jr., the latter of whom has endured a barrage of criticism from fans over the driver's slow start to this season. Earnhardt is 19th in points entering this weekend's Cup Series event at Martinsville Speedway.

"What I want to say is that I am 100 percent behind this group. I have no intentions of making any changes. I have all intentions of making it better. And these guys are working their butts off no different than Stevie and Jeff did, and I've got to believe in the next few weeks, we are going to see some real success out of that crowd," said Hendrick, referring to the tandem of driver Jeff Gordon and crew chief Steve Letarte, who struggled at times last year but are now leading the points.

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"It's just one of those things that, you know, you can shuffle the deck and start all over, but when you see little things, a little tenth [of a second] here, a tenth there, with the people in the team, with the preparation, with the plan getting to the race track, we are just putting a lot of effort against it, and I think it's going to pay us some huge dividends."

Eury has become a popular target for criticism due to Earnhardt's somewhat underwhelming start at Hendrick, where he's won once since joining the eight-time championship organization prior to last year. Earnhardt defended his crew chief last weekend at Bristol Motor Speedway, saying he wanted to race with Eury "for the rest of my life." Hendrick said he had a sit-down meeting with principals of the No. 88 team last year at Texas, and praised Earnhardt and Eury for being in the shop and working with management in an effort to improve performance. The pair sat in on a three-hour meeting with executives on Wednesday morning.

"I see a lot of effort from everybody on the team, and that's what it takes to make it work," Hendrick said in a conference call with reporters. "There's just no way that these guys are going to sit in a meeting for three hours [Wednesday] and not come out of here with a plan that's going to make them better."

Earnhardt had a calamitous start to this season, wrecking at Daytona and blowing an engine at California, but has rebounded with finishes of 14th or better in each of the past three weeks.

"The commitment from the guys on that team is there," Hendrick said. "And I kind of want to draw a parallel between, let's just take the 24 team [of Gordon] last year, and where they were, and everybody was saying, 'Hey, you need to replace Stevie or you need to do something, because they are just not running.' Last year at this time, the 88 was the best team we had on the complex, and they were the ones that were leading the charge. And then we kind of fell off toward about the Chase.

"Things were just, they didn't seem to work. And I can tell you that we have looked at everything. Dale Jr. is working out. He has changed his eating habits. We have got all of the folks that hopefully and supposedly know what to do here focused on that team, and I think the good news is, we are all trying, and I think that I'm not sure we will see the results tomorrow. But we have put all the effort we have against it, and right now, Tony Jr. is our guy."