An Earnhardt is back in victory lane at the Daytona International Speedway, the birthplace of National Association Stock Car Auto Racing, and all is right with the world.
“Winning this race is the greatest feeling you can feel in this sport outside from obviously accepting the championship trophy,” Dale Earnhardt Jr said after his victory. “I didn’t know if I’d ever get a chance to feel that again.
“And it feels just as good, if not better than the first year because of how hard we’ve tried year after year, after year. Running second all them years and wondering why and what we needed to do.”
Ten years after he went to victory lane in the #8 Budweiser Chevrolet for his family-owned Dale Earnhardt Incorporated, NASCAR’s most popular driver – he was voted same for the 11th time at the end of 2013 – has won the sport’s biggest race.
The win invokes memories of his famous father, who perished with half a lap to go at Daytona in 2001, and gives NASCAR’s Sprint Cup Series exactly the jump-start it needs for the coming season.
For the legions of fans who followed Dale Sr in his #3 Chevrolet for years and years and now, following The Intimidator’s son, it’s been a fantastic Speedweeks at Daytona.
For the first time since Earnhardt Sr’s death 13 years ago, the #3 Chevrolet is back in the Sprint Cup Series, wheeled by Austin Dillon, the grandson of Richard Childress Racing for whom Earnhardt Sr drove. It was the team for which Dale Sr won his only Daytona 500 crown way back in 1998, sparking off memorable scenes in Daytona’s Victory Lane.
In 2014, it was Dillon’s #3 RCR Chevrolet on pole after a stunning individual run last Sunday, and now Dale Earnhardt Jr, driving the #88 National Guard Chevrolet for Hendrick Motorsports, is Daytona 500 champion.
There could scarcely have been a better progression from qualifying to the race.
Surely, somewhere, Dale Sr will be watching down and smiling, for his son has certainly inherited the mastery of restrictor plate racing, which is arguably the toughest sort of racing in NASCAR.
In the decade since his first Daytona 500 crown, Earnhardt went through a projected, public and often bitter split with his father’s DEI outfit for powerhouse Hendrick Motorsports (who also field cars for Jeff Gordon, Jimmie Johnson and Kasey Kahne) and it hasn’t always been easy.
Yet it seems that Earnhardt and Letarte are peaking now. Year after year, they’ve been getting better and better, the chemistry building, the trust between the two solidifying.
They just needed a big win and now they’ve got it – and the Harley J Early Memorial Trophy as champions of the ‘Great American Race’.
In terms of how long it took to get the race completed, the 2014 Daytona 500 more resembled the Rolex 24 at Daytona than a usual stock car race on the high banks of NASCAR’s most famous racetrack.
A record rain delay of six hours and 22 minutes meant that the race, halted after 38 laps, became a prime time affair, with cars rolling again around the 2.5-mile superspeedway just after 8:30pm local.
Host broadcasters FOX must have been rubbing their hands with glee. If they had their way, then the Daytona 500, like the Memorial Day weekend Coca-Cola 600 and a handful of other events, would be a night time race each and every year.
But NASCAR holds firm, preferring the tradition of a Sunday afternoon race. With Dale Jr’s victory, television ratings figure to be somewhere approaching astronomical.
Joe Gibbs Racing’s Kyle Busch led the field when the race was red flagged and led again early after its resumption. It was clear to anyone with a look at the radar that teams were conscious of more weather in the area, and as the halfway mark of 100 laps was passed it became an official race.
Another severe weather interruption and there would likely be no restart. So they raced like there were 10 laps to go for 50 laps to halfway, and beyond.
It was fantastic staff, a perfectly breathtaking showcase for the sport: a sort of pinball game at speeds approaching 200mph on the high banks, cars three wide and deep, 20 to 30 cars separated by less than a second at times.
If this was your first glimpse of a NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race, surely you’d come back and watch some more.
Restrictor plate racing is consistently the best that NASCAR’s premiere series can offer.
There are issues on those cookie cutter 1.5-mile tracks that make up the bulk of the Sprint Cup Series schedule, where cars get strung out and there’s very little passing other than on pit road or on restarts.
But plate racing is breathtaking, and no changes are needed with a formula where anything can happen – and often will.
Amazingly, the field ran caution-free until lap 145, at which point there was rain less than 30 miles away, the radar showing an ugly green mass getting closer and closer to Daytona Beach.
The pile-up that took out Danica Patrick and two-time Daytona 500 champion Michael Waltrip wasn’t so much caused by drivers going crazy with bad weather on the way – it was simply a product of plate racing.
Post-race interviews from drivers caught up in these tangled wrecks are often very philosophical ones. They understand that plate racing, with its close quarters style, is often a lottery.
You can be minding your own business and still be caught up in someone else’s mess. Such is life on the big speedways of Daytona and Talladega.
Pit stops of a two-tyre or fuel-only variety were in vogue, with stops coming only with about 150 miles to go. Turn Four (or ‘Calamity Corner’ as FOX’s Mike Joy aptly labelled it) bit the field again, and caught up in the carnage when pole-sitter Austin Dillon turned fellow rookie Kyle Larson around was Australia’s own Marcos Ambrose.
The closer to the checkered flag the race got, the crazier things seemed to get.
A big wreck brought about a green-white-checkered flag, and on the ensuing restart Earnhardt Jr got the restart to end all restarts, even with his car possibly overheating having picked up a piece of tape across his grill on the last caution.
Even with that debris threatening to cause his engine to overhead, the #88 was unstoppable. It was Earnhardt first and daylight second, third and on back as they headed down the back straight for the final time.
Other drivers took runs, including 2012 Sprint Cup champion Brad Keselowski, who looked like he might have a shot but faded.
Joe Gibbs Racing’s Denny Hamlin executed a brilliant move and seemed to perhaps have something up his sleeve for Junior, but it wasn’t to be.
Hamlin, who had dominated Speedweeks to that point in winning the Sprint Unlimited race last Saturday and his Gatorade Duel qualifying race on Thursday night, did keep the driver of the #88 Chevrolet honest right to the very end.
As Earnhardt crossed the line, Junior Nation erupted, Daytona’s grandstands reverberating with a guttural roar of triumph as their guy became just the 11th driver in NASCAR’s long history to win multiple Daytona 500 titles.
In the process, he snapped a 55-race winless drought dating way back to Michigan in the summer of 2012 and gave crew chief Steve Letarte – who will step out of the pit box and into a broadcasting gig with NBC Sports following this season – the biggest win of his career.
What a way to break a dry spell that many doubted could be broken. Make no mistake about it – Earnhardt Jr is a Sprint Cup Series contender in 2014.
At the death of a race that will not soon be forgotten, Hamlin’s FedEx Toyota wasn’t too far behind, just ahead of Keselowski, while the rest of the field began wrecking.
Notable names like Kyle Busch, Kevin Harvick and Carl Edwards went around and hard into the wall entering the tri-oval, and the race went yellow from there.
It isn’t the first time that we’ve seen a last-lap coming together off the final corner at Daytona and, such is the nature of the race – you win here in February, and you’re instantly a part of NASCAR folklore and legend – you figure it won’t be the last, either.
It’s all or nothing on the last lap of the Daytona 500, and fans wouldn’t have it any other way.
Despite the longest weather delay in Daytona 500 history, those who found ways to amuse themselves throughout the wet and dreary afternoon and packed into the grandstands after dark as the Florida night became crisp will be rewarded for their efforts.
Earnhardt raced perhaps as well as he ever has at Daytona, and now, amazingly, has more Daytona 500 championships than his great father.
Somewhere, Dale Sr is smiling at that, too.
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