Small changes on tap for 88 after solid final practice

AVONDALE, Ariz. -- Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s crew chief, Lance McGrew, by necessity, has the ultimate in mechanical minds.

But he's obviously human enough to recognize the value of momentum. And Saturday at Phoenix International Raceway, on the eve of the penultimate race of the season, it was plenty in evidence for their No. 88 Chevrolet crew as they finished preparation for Sunday's Checker O'Reilly Auto Parts 500.

"You can't put a value on it, it's so important -- it's immeasurable," said McGrew, who a week ago was looking at his driver's first top-five finish in 12 races, or at Michigan in August, when Earnhardt ran out of gas on his way to pit road with less than four laps left in the Dickies 500.

"I'll take complete blame for last week," McGrew said. "Our mileage went away that last run and we ran out of gas a lap-and-a-half before we should have, as we were pitting that lap to get fuel. And we just ran out on remarkably less mileage than we'd gotten all day.

"But I said to him, and he said the same thing after a little while, that you have to pull the positives from that."

And as he talked about it, it was obvious that Texas, though the 25th-place result reflected the norm for the 88 this season, it was so much more. And the team hopes it establishes something this weekend.

"That was, by far, and front to back, the first time we had been competitive, with the top three, four or five cars, all day long," McGrew said. "We haven't been able to do that. We've put together races where we had a portion where we ran there, but we haven't been able to do it all day. And at Texas we did it all day. The last three laps was the only problem we had, and I was pretty excited about that.

"McGrew credited the post-Lowe's NASCAR Banking 500 Goodyear tire test and the data the team accrued, and the communication level he and Junior achieved as the plusses. (Continued)