DOVER, Del. -- Dale Earnhardt Jr. said he was going to dedicate himself to becoming more professional, and for at least one afternoon he certainly sounded like it. Communicating with new crew chief Lance McGrew over 400 miles Sunday at Dover International Speedway, the extraneous chit-chat was kept to a minimum. There were no fiery arguments, no contentious exchanges, no times when the driver appeared to be coming unhinged. He sounded like a foot soldier relaying succinct responses to a field general -- the exact term car owner Rick Hendrick uses to describe McGrew.

“

I've told all my boys, we're building Rome here, and it might take a while to get finished. ... This was a good start for us."

”

DALE EARNHARDT JR.

In short, it was nothing like the communication Earnhardt often had with former crew chief Tony Eury Jr., who was reassigned to a research and development role last week in the wake of the No. 88 team's subpar performance this season. Those two would sometimes haggle and fight like the close first cousins they are. And, as it turns out, they weren't always honest with one another -- a fact that became markedly more obvious as this new, more composed, and more informative Earnhardt worked patiently with McGrew to make his car better.

The end result was a 12th-place finish -- not exactly stellar, but still Earnhardt's best result on a non-restrictor-plate track in two months, and a vast improvement from the embarrassing 40th-place showing at Lowe's Motor Speedway week. You couldn't find a better example of the perils of working with family if you drove across Delaware Bay into New Jersey, and sat in on a therapy session with Tony Soprano.

"They told me that I need to give them a lot, and I took it upon myself to do that," Earnhardt said after the race. "It was really hard to be that way with Tony Jr., and it wasn't his fault. Maybe it was my personal fault. But me and him were too cool to talk that much to each other. Too much pride, I guess, between me and him. I don't know how you love somebody so much and carry so much pride around them, but that's the way we were. It's real easy to talk to Lance. He's a sponge and taking all that information in. It's only one race. We'll see how we communicate in two months. We'll see if we're at each others' throats then or not. I think it's a good start. We keep this type of attitude and keep working hard and maintain our expectations, and we'll be all right."

The otherwise lackluster results of this season, in which NASCAR's biggest star finds himself 18th in Sprint Cup points, don't necessarily mean Eury is a bad crew chief. They don't necessarily mean Earnhardt is a bad driver. They do mean that the combination didn't work, regardless of how well the Juniors know each other, or how much they love each other, or how much they enjoy being at the race track together. Maybe it took the shakeup for Earnhardt to realize he needed to be a little more poised over the radio, something his detractors have used against him since Hendrick had to step in last year at New Hampshire to talk him off the figurative ledge. Or maybe Earnhardt was simply incapable of communicating with Eury the same way he did with McGrew on Sunday. Maybe their relationship got in the way. (Continued)