JOLIET, Ill. -- When the decision was made for Tony Eury Jr. to follow Dale Earnhardt Jr. to Hendrick Motorsports as Earnhardt's crew chief late in the 2007 Cup season, Eury couldn't wait to get to the race track and start his new job.

The sky seemed the limit.

Check that. There didn't seem to be a limit to what the pair were going to be able to accomplish for their new employer.

Eury told team owner Rick Hendrick he was coming into his new job "with all the confidence in the world."

Former driving champion-turned-television announcer Darrell Waltrip predicted the Eury-Earnhardt tandem would win the season-opening 2008 Daytona 500 and "at least six more races" during their first season together under the Hendrick banner. When asked about this lofty prognostication, neither Hendrick nor Earnhardt blanched. They agreed, in fact, that it sounded about right.

Like most everyone else, they were wrong.

The Eury-Earnhardt team won one race at Hendrick, in June of '08, at Michigan. When they matched their struggles at the end of last season from the outset this season, Hendrick eventually felt he had to pull the plug on the long-time, on-track partnership between cousins.

And when Eury was relieved of his duties as crew chief for Earnhardt six weeks ago, he couldn't get away from the race track fast enough or far enough at first.

"You know, I've just been chillin' a lot, kind of spending some time with the wife," Eury Jr. said. "I haven't done that in a real long time, so I'm kind of enjoying that.

"Basically, I would say the first two or three weeks, I didn't even watch a race."

Eury was back at the track Thursday at Chicagoland Speedway, where he spoke publicly for the first time since his split with Earnhardt. Eury is serving as crew chief for the No. 25 Chevrolet entry driven by rookie Brad Keselowski and maintained that was his focus this weekend -- but he spoke at length and with great passion about his recent past, blaming mostly the media for placing high expectations on the No. 88 team that simply could not be met.

Asked what his thoughts and feeling were when he learned of the decision that removed him as Earnhardt's crew chief, Eury grimaced and replied: "I think it was mixed. In one shape and form it was like, 'Cool, I'm glad this is over with.' And the next one felt like I let my cousin down. I've done a lot for him, he's done a lot for me, but we enjoy racing together.

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I think, my personal opinion, is that [the media] put so much pressure on [Dale Jr.] after Daytona that [he] just basically had had enough.

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-- TONY EURY JR.

"I think a lot of people put him on a pedestal that he doesn't need to be on. They put a lot of pressure on him to be somebody he's not going to be. Dale Jr. is a great race car driver, but I just think he's got so much pressure on him that he doesn't enjoy it right now."

It got to be that Eury wasn't enjoying being Junior's crew chief any longer, either.

"You get blasted in the media and you have to go home, where my wife wouldn't even watch the race," he said. "I would come home and she would ask where we finished -- because she didn't want to sit there and hear the negativity on it. I fought it for a long time -- and at some point in time, you have to weigh it and ask if it's worth it."

Eury said he and Earnhardt didn't even communicate in the immediate aftermath of their Hendrick-induced split. But eventually, they talked.

"We just let everything ease up," Eury said. "We sent a couple texts that first weekend. We talked on the phone and it was kind of emotional for both of us.

"In no way, shape or form am I going to let this sport get in between me and Dale Jr. ... He's family and we go deeper than this racing deal."

Eury said he did not begrudge Hendrick's decision to order up the split.

"I think it had just kind of run its course," Eury said. "There were definitely some things that happened and evolved that brought us to this point. In general, it was time. There is no other way to put it.

"We just needed to try something different. Dale Jr. is not getting any younger, so let's give him the opportunity to work with somebody else and try something else. Definitely the road we were going down, it wasn't a bed of roses, so let's try something different. That's where it was at."

So far, the switch from Eury Jr. to Lance McGrew as Earnhardt's crew chief has not had much of an impact on the No. 88 team. Earnhardt enters Saturday's LifeLock.com 400 at Chicagoland ranked 21st in points. He was 19th in points when the change was made May 28.

Eury said this season went downhill fast after Earnhardt encountered difficulty finding his pit stall during this year's season-opening Daytona 500, relegating him to a 27th-place finish in a race the cousins believed they could win. For the spiral that followed, Eury insisted the media mostly was to blame.

"I think, my personal opinion, is that you guys put so much pressure on him after Daytona that Dale Jr. just basically had had enough," Eury said. "We went to Daytona and had a shot at winning that race, had some problems on pit road, but we ain't going to slam Dale Jr. We're going to pick him up and say, 'Let's go to Vegas.' That was after we went to California and blew up, so there's two negative weeks.

"You guys were all over him and it just brought him down. I don't think we had a strong enough finish [they were 10th at Las Vegas in the third race of the season] to bring him back up, so every week the hole gets deeper and deeper and deeper. It was like throwing a squirrel into a hole; it's not coming out. So it will dig the other way to get away from everything. Basically, I think that's it in a nutshell. It's unfortunate."

Eury did admit that the positive chemistry he felt the pair enjoyed while racing the No. 8 Chevy at Dale Earnhardt Inc. went away when they came over to Hendrick, never to completely return.

"I was always looking around the corner toward the positive," said Eury, who spent five seasons as Earnhardt's car chief before becoming his crew chief in 2006 at DEI. "I always looked at it that if I had to do it myself, I would turn it around. But one thing you learn real quick is that you can't do it all by yourself. You have to be surrounded by good people and people who have faith in you -- and that's what makes a good race team in this garage. If there are two people who believe in you and the rest of them don't, then you really don't have a lot going for you and it's an uphill battle.

"I think that was the chemistry we had with the No. 8 car at DEI. There was a lot of heart and soul in that team, where we believed in one another and picked up the next guy beside you and carried on and always did whatever you could. I think that's what I kind of missed [with the No. 88 team at Hendrick]."

Despite the heavy criticism he took on an almost constant basis from disgruntled, disappointed fans and the scrutinizing media, Eury insisted that he doesn't believe he has to prove anything to anyone. He said he will work in the Research and Development division at Hendrick for the next six months before deciding if he even wants to consider a return to the Cup garage as a crew chief.

Meanwhile, there was work to be done Thursday. Eury was trying to make certain Keselowski's No. 25 car was fast enough to make the 43-car field for this Saturday's race.

"I feel satisfied in everything I've done," said Eury, who was crew chief for only two of Earnhardt's 18 career Cup wins. "Whether the people, the race fans, the media -- whether they believe it or don't like it or whatever, I feel very successful. I've won a bunch of races. I've done everything in this garage at some point. I've got nothing to prove, you know what I'm saying?

"Would it have been nice to win a Cup championship [with Earnhardt] over here? Yeah, it sure would have. But I'm still at an organization right now where I can be a part of one. Whether I'm the leader of it or just being a part of it, it means something."