LAS VEGAS -- For Dale Earnhardt Jr., things are already beginning to change under his new crew chief. On their flight to Las Vegas where Earnhardt accepted his eighth consecutive NASCAR Most Popular Driver Award, Steve Letarte mentioned that his wife and two children pipe the radio feed from dad's team into their home speaker system, and listen to all the conversations between Letarte and his driver during the race.

"So I told him, you've got to ease up on the F-bombs just a little bit, because we're going to have young ears listening," Letarte said Thursday. "I think he's more nervous about that than anything."

"I'm definitely going to have to change my vocabulary," Earnhardt agreed.

It's the first step in what all involved hope will become a more professional and ultimately more successful Earnhardt, who during the past two years at Hendrick Motorsports has watched one teammate after another vie for a championship on NASCAR's premier series while his No. 88 car has finished deep in final points. A key component in that process is Letarte, who oversaw a number of title runs with Jeff Gordon before Rick Hendrick paired him with Earnhardt in a sweeping personnel shuffle following the final event of this past season.

Letarte -- who replaced Lance McGrew, moved to Mark Martin's program in a shuffle that also paired Gordon with Alan Gustafson -- will be the third crew chief Earnhardt has had during his stint at Hendrick, but the first with a proven track record of making the Chase year after year. In a little more than five full years with Gordon, the 31-year-old native of Portland, Maine, won 10 races and never failed to qualify for the year-end playoff. Earnhardt knows the potential, and seems itching to get back behind the wheel.

"It's a real good feeling at the very beginning. You look at it as a clean slate and a new chance to see if this new package, new chemistry will produce better results. The anticipation to get to the track is more, and you're ready to get to work, and you want to go run laps and see speed and see adjustments and feel new cars and what they're doing and how they're reacting to the changes the new crew chief is making and the new engineer is producing," Earnhardt said at the Bellagio casino hotel, where he received his Most Popular Driver Award during the annual NMPA/Myers Brothers luncheon.

"It's like knowing what you're getting for Christmas, but not being able to mess with it until that morning. It's a lot of anticipation, and I think it's healthy. We need this to happen. I needed this to happen. Hopefully this is a good position. Hopefully this will get me back to winning races, running in the top five, running in the top 10. I used to own up to my own inconsistencies back in 2000, 2001, all the way up through 2004 and '05 when we had some of our more successful years. I used to own up to my inconsistencies then. I would do anything to be that inconsistent now. I know I can be that guy again, at least that good, and this is a good opportunity to see if that can happen."

From 2000 through 2005, Earnhardt won 16 times and enjoyed unquestionably his most successful stint at NASCAR's top level. Now, he's won just once in his last 170 starts. The last two years have been especially trying, his struggle magnified by his presence on a Hendrick team that's won the past five Cup championships and swept the top three positions in final points in 2009. McGrew replaced Tony Eury Jr. midway through the 2008 season, and while Earnhardt said the two never had any personal differences, on race day it often appeared as if the relationship struggled to click.

"I never had a real rough moment with anybody I've worked with in the past, including Lance. The guys that I've worked with, I thank them for working as hard all the way up to the very last lap of the very last race as if it was the first. They're a great, fun group to be around, and we always enjoyed working together and enjoyed going to the race track together no matter how difficult it was. As poorly as we ran sometimes, we still enjoyed doing what we did," Earnhardt said.

"I think we did some good things. We just weren't moving along fast enough in this world as far as getting more productive and becoming better as a team .... In this time and age, you've got to produce now. We feel that urgency. We feel that pressure and that responsibility. I do. I feel like everybody in the sport does, everybody from the driver to the guy changing tires from the sponsor on the side of the car. Everybody feels that pressure to win today, to get better right now. We made some good adjustments that I feel are good for everybody. They'll help everybody."

At Hendrick, the team changes immediately took root, to the point where the large exterior numbers that denote shop configurations -- now they're 24/5 and 48/88, with Earnhardt paired alongside five-time champ Jimmie Johnson -- have already been moved. Earlier this week Earnhardt took his old crew out to lunch to say thank you, and spent time shaking hands and meeting the members of his new team, who had been Gordon's unit. Earnhardt will admit, he didn't know many of those guys very well previously, and walking into the new building felt like the first day of school.

The presence of Letarte, though, surely brought a measure of familiarity. Letarte's first race as Gordon's crew chief, at New Hampshire in the fall of 2005, was also Eury Jr.'s first as Earnhardt's crew chief with the old No. 8 team, and the two sides have been friendly ever since. When Earnhardt first visited Hendrick when he was contemplating leaving Dale Earnhardt Inc., it was Letarte who showed him around. There's clearly a comfort level already between the two.

"He's a little bit of a motorboat, talks a lot. Can't get a word in around him, I'll tell you," Earnhardt said with a smile. "But if you can hack it, that's about the only bad thing about him. He's got a great disposition, he's got a great personality, everybody knows what kind of guy he is. And even as young as he is, it's surprising when you hear what his age is, because he just seems so mature, far more mature than that. I trust what he's going to be able to do. I tell him every day, I'm ready to go to the track, I'm ready to go to the track, let's do it. I just want to get around the new group and get to know everybody and form the most solid foundation we can relationship-wise throughout the team as soon as we can, before we get to the race track."

And yet Letarte is also buttoned-down Hendrick to the core, someone who started working at the shop as a teenager, and was a crew member in some capacity on all four of Gordon's championship teams. During races, he's renowned for his ability to keep his driver confident and positive over the radio, something Gordon frequently lauded. That trait is a large reason Hendrick paired Letarte with Earnhardt, whose emotions over the radio can run the full spectrum, to the point where they can get in the way of accurately translating what the car needs. The crew chief knows keeping his new driver upbeat and focused will be key to his team's performance.

"I think that's the majority of my job," Letarte said. "We have very smart guys who work on the race car, I have 100 percent confidence in Hendrick Motorsports and the engineering staff, the setups and things like that. My job is to make sure our car performs, and that will be up to Dale and I. I know he can drive. I know we have fast cars. What we have to do is get through 500 miles and be around for the end. I think if we can do that, we'll be a lot more consistent in a lot more races, and we'll be up front in a lot more races."

Earnhardt hopes that attitude is contagious. "I hope for me that being around him and his group and their professionalism will rub off on me and make me a better driver," he said. "Make me a better person, more productive in my communication with him."

Related:
Junior most popular for eighth year in a row
Changes shake up 'complacent' Hendrick team