Heading into the Daytona 500, Earnhardt Jr. is confident in his car and his team in their opportunity to take home the biggest win of the season.
“We have a good car. This car has a ton of preparation and time put into it compared to even the backup car,” Earnhardt Jr. commented.
So far, so good as Earnhardt Jr. has kept the primary car out of trouble, driving it home to a solid finish in the first Gatorade Duel to qualify ninth for the Daytona 500. Earnhardt wants to keep the car clean as he feels it gives him the best opportunity to win the race as they’ve been building on this car with each practice and the Duel, finding ways to make it better.
Though if you expand your horizons outwards, there are many drivers who haven’t been unfortunate and Earnhardt attributes part of that due to how the side draft is under the new package. He says that the new package allows for drivers to get closer to each other than they have the past couple of years.
“Whether it’s the fenders being flared and the wheel wells not sealing up to the tires, but there is something going on with these cars,” Earnhardt commented. “We had it last year and we first noticed it last year when we raced them at the plate tracks where they kind of get stuck beside each other.
“You just have to sit there beside someone until someone pushes you by and when everybody kind of gets jammed up behind a couple of guys that are stuck beside each other, you have what we had in the second accident (in Wednesday’s practice).”
With everything going well so far, the confidence is high on the No. 88 National Guard team, and that marks no surprise. In three of the past four Daytona 500s, Earnhardt has finished in the runner-up position.
“Neither one of them were a win, but that is nothing to be ashamed of. I still feel like that we run well enough at these tracks for me to continue to come into them with confidence, and just in myself regardless of the car,” he commented. “I still feel like I do restrictor place race well, understand how the draft works rather well, and enjoy racing at them. You know, I hope that is always the case. It’s a different challenge every time you come back and that makes it enjoyable. The packages may change and maybe the package doesn’t change, but the dynamic weather and this track surface always changes, so the way you draft is always different no matter what.”
Another dynamic is certianly the tone in which the race takes and how drivers are able to adapt to that. Earnhardt feels that despite some of the crazy racing we’ve seen, he feels the 500 will be calmer due to the length of the race. However, as they get near the end of the race, double file racing is expected as Earnhardt says the package leads to that.
“That is good and we need that and we definitely didn’t race enough in the Daytona 500 last year,” Earnhardt comments. “You couldn’t race because you would just go to the back and couldn’t risk pulling out because you just didn’t know and going to the rear was a likely result. So we really won’t have that this year and won’t have to worry about that because the bottom seems to be able to put together runs and that is going to make for a better race.
“We have been able to race side-by-side here forever and I think we can do it Sunday without any trouble and put on a great show.”
Each time NASCAR seems to change the package – whether it leads to good racing or not – Earnhardt seems to know how to adapt to it. The 2004 Daytona 500 Champion says the secret is keeping an open-mind.
“What you learn when you first start racing at these tracks is important, but how it works is always changing and you’ve got to be ready for that,” he added. “You can’t expect it to react at the exact same time every time you come back here. And how the car’s side-draft; they side-draft, for lack of a better word, they are a little more frustrating to side-draft with now. You used to use a side-draft as an offensive move, where you would get up on the guy’s quarter panel and stall him out and it would give you a boost and you’d pull away like jumping a boat wake and get out away from him so he could not do the same thing to you and you would make a pass. That was how we used to use that with success.
“But now, there’s an extreme stall when you side-draft a guy and it really kills his car. But before you can get out and get away from him, it starts to kill your car and you sort of sit there and just fight on each other’s quarter panels until somebody tucks-in behind one of you and pushes you through. So that’s more frustrating. You’d rather just make the move on your own and move on to the next guy. But you’ve got to be open to those things changing. And when the do change, recognize it and understand it.”
All eyes will be on Earnhardt when the green flag flies on Sunday afternoon to determine whether he has the package figured out, and whether he can make the most of it and deliver his team a Daytona 500 victory.
