Fox_NASCAR_Guy's Blog

Daytona Photo Gallery: Duel Qualifying Races


Dale Earnhardt Junior seems to have found his happy place.

After a much publicized and some would say maligned move to Hendrick Motorsports, Dale Earnhardt Junior has come out of the box swinging.

In his competitive debut with his new team, he won the Bud Shootout at Daytona International Speedway. He followed that performance by winning the first Duel qualifying race Thursday after starting from the rear of the field.

Now of course he’s a favorite to win the biggest race of them all the Daytona 500.

“I feel like we got a shot, you know what I mean?,” Earnhardt Junior said. “Nobody's boastful enough, I don't think, personality-wise to claim that. I wouldn't expect anybody to do that.

But I thought we got a great shot. We've won some races down here, so we got to be in the group if there's a group of them.”

He’s also set himself up to do something that has never been done during Speedweeks; win the Shootout, a qualifying race and the Daytona 500.

What would that mean to Earnhardt Junior?

“It would mean we have a good race car,” he said. “It would mean that we have some awesome stuff down here. I'm just going to try to do whatever I can to win that race. It's going to be hard to win it, but it's going to be hard for everybody.”

Now Earnhardt is winning races again after a two year drought. He seems to be validating his move to Hendrick Motorsports.

But until the season unfolds it will remain to be seen if Earnhardt’s happy place is really Hendrick Motorsports or simply one track.

“We got to remember we're at Daytona,” Earnhardt said. “We've had a lot of wins here. We can't really, you know, sing a whole lot of praise right just yet. We got a lot of racing left to do, a lot of tracks to go to, a lot of work in front of us.

No one knows if the euphoria and the wins will continue beyond Daytona including Earnhardt himself. He knows though that with the boost he takes from Daytona anything is possible.

“We'll see what happens,” he said. “We're going to work hard. We're going to keep working hard. If we're lucky and the good Lord thinks we're deserving, we should have some success.”