Junior's win kicks off new NASCAR era

By Chris Jenkins, USA TODAY

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla.  The familiar shouts of pure elation — or, this case, el-8-tion — reached their peak when fans saw their favorite driver pull the No. 8 car onto the infield grass after Sunday's Daytona 500.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. moves past Tony Stewart on lap 181 to take the lead he would never relinquish, going on to win the 46th Daytona 500. By Terry Renna, AP

"Juuuuuuun-yer!"

The yelps probably were a little more subdued in the buttoned-down suites overlooking Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s celebration at Daytona International Speedway, but the sentiment could have been just as genuine.

NASCAR's new braintrust, led by third-generation chairman Brian France, wanted to put on a good show for the first sitting U.S. president to attend NASCAR's biggest race. Although George W. Bush left about halfway through, he saw exciting racing with the sport's biggest names out front, and he called Earnhardt later.

And speaking of important phone calls, don't forget about the cell phone marketers who have paid millions of dollars to slather their name all over stock car racing. They've chosen Earnhardt as their most public face, putting him in their TV commercials, and his win at Daytona kicked off the Nextel Cup era in style — at least from a business standpoint.

Even ultra-competitive driver Tony Stewart, a man liable to use a second-place trophy as a doorstop, honest-to-goodness said he was "tickled" to finish second to Earnhardt on Sunday.

Dale's winning rides Sunday's Daytona 500 victory was Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s eighth win and 10th top-10 finish in 23 races at the track. His eight victories: Year Race 2004 Daytona 500 2004 Gatorade Twin 125 2003 Budweiser Shootout 2003 Gatorade Twin 125 2003 Busch Series 250 2003 Busch Series 300 2002 Busch Series 250 2001 Pepsi 400

"Considering what this kid went through losing his father here at the Daytona 500, and knowing how good he's been here and just something's happened, it's nice to see him get his victory here, too," said Stewart, a close friend of Earnhardt's. "I think his father's really proud today. You know, I'd love to have won the race, trust me. I did everything I could to still win the race. If I could have held him off, had him finish second, I would have done in it a heartbeat. But there was no holding that kid back today. Today was his day."

He becomes part of the third father-son combination to win the Daytona 500, joining Lee and Richard Petty and Bobby and Davey Allison.

Earnhardt made it look easy when he pulled around Stewart and took the lead with 19 laps to go, even though it wasn't.

A vital crew member left the Dale Earnhardt Inc. team a week before it left for Daytona. Earnhardt spent the previous week complaining about his car's handling and Goodyear's new tire despite running well in warm-up events. An early-race crash Sunday left Earnhardt without his usual wingman, teammate Michael Waltrip. But the two hadn't been working well together at Daytona this year anyway — something that prodded Earnhardt's crew into a public spat with Waltrip three days before the race. (Related item: Drivers pleased with new tires)

And above all, this is the track that claimed his father's life three years ago. Not that he holds it against the place. Whenever Earnhardt comes here, he says he feels "it," but can't describe what it is.

"We just feel real strong about being here," he said. "You know, in a way it feels like you're closer to Dad, but at the same time it feels like it's a reminder of losing him all over again. So I wanted to come down here and win."

The personal significance of the victory resonated to the top of the DEI organization. Teresa Earnhardt, Dale Earnhardt Sr.'s widow and Dale Jr.'s stepmother, made a rare appearance in victory lane.

Dad struggled at Daytona

Dale Earnhardt Sr. won 34 events at Daytona but needed an agonizing 20 tries to win the Daytona 500.

Blown tires, crashes and mechanical problems always seemed to steal near-certain victories. Those losses were one of the few times Earnhardt saw his father show emotion.

"You see Dad run second, blow tires out, flip over on the back straightaway, this, that and the other, year after year after year after year," Earnhardt said. "And there was not many things, if nothing at all, that ate that man's insides out but losing this race over and over; you could see that on his face. That's one of the things I think anybody could tell bothered him. He didn't show too much of that."

Until Sunday, it seemed Earnhardt Jr. was beginning to build an eerily similar Daytona résumé— fast cars and plenty of victories in other events at the track, but disappointment in the race that really counts. Before today, Earnhardt had won seven races at Daytona, including an emotional victory in July 2001, the first race at Daytona after his father's death.

However, Earnhardt also has had the dominant car in the past two Daytona 500s and not come close to winning. In 2002, a tire gave out early in the race, damaging his car and forcing him to make an extra pit stop. Driving with a repaired front end comprised of more duct tape than metal, he still was able to go faster than the leaders but couldn't make up the time he lost in the pits and finished 36th.

Last year, his alternator broke early in the race. Again, his crew fixed it, and he again went out to turn fast laps. But rain came before he could catch up, and he finished 29th.

Earnhardt even got stung in this year's Rolex 24-hour sports car race, a low-profile non-NASCAR race some Nextel Cup stars use to prepare for the Daytona 500. He and Stewart shared a car in this year's race and were closing on a victory when their car broke. "In a sense, you couldn't beat that sore hard enough to make it hurt anymore," Earnhardt said. "You know what I mean? I done been through it enough."

That was only one of several challenges Earnhardt faced at Speed Weeks. Just as the team was preparing to leave for Daytona, team executive Ty Norris left in a management shake-up. In addition to running DEI's day-to-day operations for Earnhardt's widow, Teresa, Norris worked as Earnhardt's spotter during races. Standing atop the grandstand with a radio, he served as an extra pair of eyes for Earnhardt, helping the driver negotiate traffic and avoid trouble on the track.

Earnhardt replaced Norris with Stevie Reeves, a former driver. The transition wasn't necessarily smooth — several times during Sunday's race, Earnhardt came on the radio to remind Reeves that he likes his spotter to talk all the time, giving him constant updates on where he is in relation to other drivers — but ultimately, it worked.

Another challenge: tension between Earnhardt's crew chief, Tony Eury Sr., and Waltrip. In past races at Daytona and Talladega, Earnhardt and Waltrip had teamed up and watched each other's backs, but the two didn't seem to work well together during one of two 125-mile qualifying races on Thursday. In a TV interview, Eury said, "seems like our teammate don't want to be our teammate no more, so we ended up dumping him."

Waltrip's response: "Tony's an idiot. That's all I can say to that. Dale Jr. and I will drive the cars. He needs to to worry about changing tires or whatever it is he does."

So when Waltrip got the worst of a multicar crash on lap 71, flipping several times and landing upside-down, it didn't really affect Earnhardt's race strategy. Still, Earnhardt said he was happy that Waltrip got through the wreck without serious injury. "That was a nasty looking car once the crash was over with," Earnhardt said. "It was good to know he was OK."

And while Earnhardt spent much of the week complaining about a new-for-2004 tire design, he seemed to like it Sunday. As the new tires wore more quickly than past models, it separated the good-handling cars from the bad-handling cars and produced less dangerous racing. The three-car-wide, 30-car-deep packs that typify Daytona weren't as severe.

But what if one of Earnhardt's tires had gone flat during the last lap Sunday, as happened in his father's agonizing loss in 1990. "I mean, I don't know if anybody in this room can explain it, but if my tire would have blew out on the last lap, I don't think it would have bothered me one bit," Earnhardt said. "You know what I mean? We just had to come back again and again and again and again."

Perhaps Earnhardt meant that this track couldn't take anything more precious from him than what it already has taken. But he doesn't hold a grudge against Daytona. He says it makes him feel closer to his father, like his father was riding in the passenger's seat. And on Sunday, Earnhardt also felt like he was closer to being as good as his father.

"There's days when I feel like I'm as good as he was," Earnhardt says. "But, you know, then you're reminded by something that reminds you of what he did that you will never be able to do. And that doesn't have to be a race he won. But, you know, there's times on the racetrack where I get real confident and feel like I — he couldn't have done it no better than that right there. But it ain't long before I figure I was wrong, you know. I mean, he was pretty tough. Even if you thought you were better than him, he just had a way of proving you wrong."

Sr.'s team thriving

Unlike the aftermath of July 2001 race, there didn't seem to be any conspiracy talk Sunday. Stewart says whatever technical advantage DEI has at Daytona and Talladega, it's substantial. "But, I mean, they're not doing anything illegal," Stewart said. "They're just finding something that nobody else has found yet." And DEI has another chance to demonstrate its Daytona dominance Monday, as Earnhardt is expected to race in a Busch Series race that was postponed by rain on Saturday.

That means Earnhardt might have to take it easy during the postrace party. On the heels of the recent DUI arrest of fellow Nextel Cup driver Scott Wimmer — who finished third Sunday and has yet to be punished by NASCAR officials, as they await the court case's outcome — NASCAR officials will be keeping a close eye on Earnhardt's condition this morning. That is, if he was able to wake up for Monday's race.

"I don't know," Earnhardt joked about facing the alarm clock. "They might have to put the whip to me."