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.

"Communication is not as simple as it would seem," McGrew said with a chuckle. "Everybody describes things different, and Jimmie [Johnson] describes things different than Jeff [Gordon, fourth Hendrick teammate], Jeff describes 'em different than Mark [Martin] who describes 'em different than Dale.

"It's difficult sometimes because Dale will be descriptive in one way and Mark in another and to decipher between the two even though they may be describing exactly the same thing sometimes you end up going in the wrong direction. It's taken a little bit to get that together.

"So now we come back to Phoenix, and that communication keeps getting better and better, I'm asking the right questions and he starts being more descriptive in what he wants in the car. I feel like there's no limit to how good we can run because we keep bringing good cars to the race track and we're unloading faster and faster."

At Phoenix, Earnhardt has two wins and seven top-10 finishes in 14 career starts, including leading 63 laps here in the spring before he finished 31st.

Earnhardt qualified 18th on Friday and ended Happy Hour -- the lone, 75-minute session on Saturday due to a brief rain squall -- in third on the time sheet behind championship leaders and Hendrick Motorsports teammates Jimmie Johnson and Mark Martin.

"We still are kind of hit and miss in qualifying, and I felt like we had the car a little bit too tight [Friday] and didn't get the adjustments we needed," McGrew said. "But everyone on the race team has stepped up, the whole company has, steering this thing in the right direction for the start of next season."

"But Phoenix, obviously [Earnhardt] runs good at, and Homestead so we'll keep building the momentum we feel like we've already started," McGrew said after the regular Hendrick debrief among drivers and crew chiefs, and then a lengthy session with his engineering staff.

"The car was the best it was about the fourth run of practice," McGrew said of the session, in which Earnhardt set his fast lap on his second of 41 laps. "We felt like that was a good baseline, so we went out looking for some more, we got off the page and got the car too tight. But he was really happy with the car on that fourth run and we'll make small changes from there."

As good as the team was at Texas, and with Earnhardt's history, McGrew said their first win together could come Sunday.

"Ultimately we just have to be on top of the setup because generally this place goes with a lot of green-flag laps," McGrew said. "As far as changes, [Sunday] will be different because the race will be during the day. You've got sunshine to deal with, the track's gonna have less grip; some of the things your car did [Saturday] it won't do [Sunday] because practice was overcast.

"So you have to be real careful on what you change or try to change, because it's not going to be the same, and working with these cars is like being on the head of a pin. I'm making the smallest adjustments I've made in 15 years in this sport, and with an adjustment that small you can end up way off, so you have to be careful."

Note: The first of two practices scheduled for Saturday was canceled because of rain.

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