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.

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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."

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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.

"I go back to the way I've talked with my family members before, growing up with my brother," Hendrick said. "They feel like they want to revert back to what they did a long time ago, or it's just a short comment and no real conversation. I think [Sunday] it pressed Junior to explain what the car was doing."

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I think the communication was fantastic.

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LANCE McGREW

Hendrick said he originally considered having Eury sit on the box and letting McGrew call the race, but ultimately decided against it. Wednesday, he made the call -- Eury was moved to the R&D role, general manager Brian Whitesell would run the No. 88 team at Dover, and McGrew would take over at Pocono after a one-race stint with Brad Keselowski. That plan was amended after Keselowski failed to qualify for the Autism Speaks 400. Sunday morning, Hendrick and competition director Ken Howes decided that McGrew would make the calls at Dover.

The results were startling. Earnhardt struggled a little at first with McGrew's more rapid speech pattern, but the feedback from the driver was clinical and direct. Nobody whined, nobody pointed fingers, nobody fought. With 166 laps remaining, Earnhardt was up to third thanks in part to a caution that had trapped some contenders a lap down. Then came an adjustment that tightened up the car to the point where the tires were chattering, and led to the team's only real rough patch of the day. "We're in real trouble setup-wise," Earnhardt told McGrew, before making an extra pit stop that sent the No. 88 car back to 15th.

And yet, they fought through it. McGrew gave Earnhardt encouragement when he needed it, apologized when his setup tactics didn't work as hoped, even urged his driver to drink more during the event. There were no pit-road blunders, no missed pit boards. In fact, Earnhardt even gained two spots on pit road late in the event. No one seemed displeased with the final result.

"We definitely had a productive day," Earnhardt said. "I've told all my boys, we're building Rome here, and it might take a while to get finished. But if everyone works hard, we'll get it right. This was a good start for us."

Added McGrew: "In this sport, this level of competition, we're not going to go from where we'd been running to first. That's just not going to happen. This week we needed to run 11th through 15th. Next week I want to run 15th through 12th, and we'll keep going. I think the communication was fantastic."

Hendrick agreed. "Overall I'd give it a really good grade," he said. "Had we not had that one adjustment, I think we'd have had a top-six or a top-five car. For the guys to work that well together this quick, I was real pleased. I listened to them all day, and the communication was extremely good."

Of course, it's only one race. Two years ago when Greg Erwin took over a Greg Biffle team that was 19th in points, they came to Dover and ran sixth. "I thought, wow, this is easy," Erwin jokes now. They finished 30th and 38th in their next two races, and wound up missing the Chase. But the reclamation of the No. 88 program is an organization-wide effort at Hendrick Motorsports, as evidenced by the six people working atop the pit box at one point in the race. Decisions on car setup are now being made not by one person, but by a committee of McGrew, Whitesell, and engineer Tom Stewart. Chassis engineer Rex Stump has been assigned to the team for the duration. There's no shortage of manpower in the effort to turn Earnhardt's season around.

As for Earnhardt himself? If Sunday is a glimpse of the attitude he'll have going forward, then it's only a matter of time. In these situations, change often naturally brings an improvement in performance. But ultimately, it may have been their desire to be together that held both Earnhardt and Eury back.

"I told Lance, I said, I'm ready to work. I'll do whatever y'all say. Y'all tell me whatever I need to do better, different, whatever, I'm ready to work. I've always felt that way," Earnhardt said, sitting on the top step of his team transporter after a physical Dover race. "We just got so beat up at the end of the deal with Tony Jr. Me and him were both at the bottom, and we couldn't help each other. I'm willing to do whatever it takes. My attitude is better this week, and this helps. This helps a little bit. Hopefully, we can build on it. In this sport, you're a hero one week and a zero the next, man. It can humble you just as quickly as it can put you on top of the world. We just have to measure our expectations and be smart about our decisions on the weekend."

• Video: Junior talks about his race at Dover

The opinions expressed are solely of the writer.