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Besides being cousins and friends, crew chief Tony Eury Jr. and Dale Earnhardt Jr. have something else in common.
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"Junior is real old school," Eury said. "He loves old stuff. And I do, too."
Old school, in this case, means an appreciation for the history of NASCAR and the people that built the stock car sport into what it is today.
"I admire the people that have put the sport out there for us," Eury said. "Probably one of my biggest heroes in the garage is Leonard Wood. He's a very intelligent man. I talk to him at least twice a weekend.
"Those guys, the experiences that they've had, the things that they've done in the past, it's overwhelming. With so little, they've done so much. Me and Dale Jr. talk a lot about it. We really respect the old guys."
Eury said he feels particularly fortunate to have watched longtime Cup stars like Harry Gant and Darrell Waltrip drive in their prime.
"I got to see those guys race, and there's a lot of guys in the garage that never got to see that," Eury noted. "Everybody knows this is a unique sport and not everybody can do it."
Eury, who moved with Junior from Dale Earnhardt Inc. to Hendrick Motorsports this season, is just as anxious as his driver to end their current 72-race winless string. And he noted that Darlington, where the Sprint Cup cars were scheduled to run Saturday night, would be a perfect place for that to happen.
"It's on (Earnhardt Jr.'s) list," Eury said. "Just like we've got Martinsville, we've got some older tracks that he's really looking forward to trying to win there because that puts you in an elite group.
"It'd be kind of special. Everybody goes to Martinsville and it's like, 'I forgot what time it is. I need one of those grandfather clocks (that they give to the winners).' Same thing for Darlington. If you can say you've won there, it would be really special."
Driver development
Ricky Stenhouse Jr. is still going to school. The 20-year-old's classrooms are racetracks like Kentucky Speedway.
That's where he's competing this weekend in the ARCA RE/MAX Series as an entry for Roush Fenway Racing's driver development program.
Stenhouse, whose background includes 14 years in go-karts, sprint cars and midgets, is coming off a third-place finish last Sunday at Rockingham in a 500-kilometer ARCA event, the longest race of his career.
