Feburary 19

The “hero cards” have been printed out, the media have been fed and Speedweeks 2005 will come to an end today.

And at 2 PM Eastern this afternoon, the 2005 Chase for the Nextel Cup will be underway, as the green flag drops and the drivers start doing their talking on the track.

Last year Dale Earnhardt Junior shouted out to the whole world that he had arrived has he captured his first win in the “Great American Race” exactly six years to the day after his late father won his first and only 500.

Michael Waltrip (15) noses his car past teammate Dale Earnhardt Jr. (8) at the finish of the first Gatorade Duel at the Daytona International Speedway Thursday. After a slow start the DEI duo deserve watching today (AP)

In January testing here, the DEI duo of Junior and Michael Waltrip looked rather weak.

After an off-season swap that saw Dale Earnhardt Inc teams turned upside down last December, some questioned is the move had been the right thing to do.

The cars and crew that won a career-high six races with Earnhardt last year now belong to Waltrip. Pete Rondeau and the rest of a team that finished last season winless and 20th in points with Waltrip now belong to Earnhardt.

"I don't think it's a risk," Earnhardt said. "We just had to change. I don't understand what the big deal is."

A slow start (39th in qualifying) to Speedweeks aside, the 30-year-old seems to have clicked immediately with Rondeau, who guided him to a dominant victory in a Busch race at Bristol last August.

Earnhardt finished second to Waltrip in Thursday's qualifier. With Rondeau calling the shots yesterday, he led 18 laps on his way to a third-place finish in the Busch race. He turned the fastest lap (190.416) in yesterday's final Cup practice, and the switch is now turning heads.

"It's a team I'd be worried about for the championship because they're saying finishing in the top five isn't good enough," team owner Ray Evernham said. "To run second in the championship, can you grow without making a change? No, you have to be better to win. I applaud them for taking a top-five team and saying, 'We're not good enough.'"

Despite all the success, the mood wasn't always happy in the No. 8 camp last year. Working with uncle Tony Eury and cousin Tony Eury Jr. for the eighth consecutive season, Earnhardt's radio conversations often turned into full-scale family feuds at 180 mph.

That's changed with Rondeau, whose mild-mannered demeanor keeps Earnhardt from agonizing over decisions in his motorhome every night as he did with the Eurys.

"He's the boss," Earnhardt said. "There'll be times when I don't want to do what he wants to, but I'm going to leave it up to him."

In last Saturday's Bud Shootout, the former attendee of military school answered Rondeau with a "yes, sir" as his crew scrambled to diagnose an engine problem. In past years, a hint of trouble would trigger profanity-filled tirade laced with personal attacks at his relatives.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. (L) and Mark Martin speak in the garage area at the Daytona International Speedway in Daytona Beach, Florida February 19, 2005. The drivers were about to begin the final practice session for the 47th Daytona 500 (AP)

"That's why we made the switch," said Eury Jr., now Waltrip's crew chief. "There was a lack of respect. He'd talk to us the way he'd talk to his buddies. Now he's got a group around him [that aren't] his buddies. He's got to make sure of what he says. If he [ticks] them off, they'll just up and leave. The deal he had, he could say what he wanted to, get away with it, and everyone would be there next week."

Eury, who remains one of Earnhardt's closest friends, said the relationship also soured because he put too much pressure on Junior when the team jumped to Cup in '00 after back-to-back Busch titles.

"They had such expectations the minute they walked in," DEI Director of Motorsports Richie Gilmore said. "They never had a chance to enjoy this."

Crew chief shuffles have a strong track record since Richard Childress kick-started the trend in 1998 by switching Kevin Hamlin, a laid-back Midwesterner similar to Rondeau, to Dale Earnhardt and Larry McReynolds, a gregarious Alabama native, to Mike Skinner. The gambit rejuvenated Earnhardt's career.

Mark Martin contended for a championship in '02 after getting Ben Leslie from Kurt Busch, who won last year's title with the man (Jimmy Fennig) he inherited from Martin.

McReynolds said Earnhardt Jr. and the Eurys probably reached the same point he did with Earnhardt when they "weren't on the same page for getting a car around the track."

"That group had been together several years, and all the parties involved had hit the ceiling," McReynolds said. "They can't take it to next level, which is consistency and a championship."

A new face worked in '04 for Elliott Sadler, who catapulted into the Chase for the Nextel Cup in his first full season with Todd Parrott.

"Any driver-crew chief relationship seems after four or five years to get kind of stale," Sadler said. "You have the same answers to every question, and you've got to mix up things.

"Junior's still a wheelman. If this is the change he thinks he needs to be a champion, he needed to try it. You need to try it now instead of waiting until you're 39. Now's a good time."

There are no regrets so far for Earnhardt, who has found this Speedweeks "a whole lot easier to just relax working with Pete."

"I don't look at it as going backward at all," he said. "I never would have done it if I felt that way. I trust and believe in what he says.

"It's been a breeze."

Dale Jarrett, the pole-sitter for today's 47th running of the 500, said he expects the same kind of slam-bang racing today that fans saw in Thursday's 150-mile qualifying races, Friday's Craftsman Truck Series run and Saturday's 300-miler for the Busch Series.

"I think it's going to be pretty aggressive racing all day," Jarrett said. "I don't see it calming down much."

He said the end of the 500 could end up being like the Busch and Truck races, both of which ended under caution after late-race melees on the frontstretch.

"I think that as long as there are plenty of cars left at the end that the end is going to be pretty wild," Jarrett said.

Everyone is expecting a wild, wide-open race today.

Besides Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson, whose first plate race victory came here Feb. 12 in the non-points Budweiser Shootout, the Hendricks entry of second-year Cup driver Brian Vickers could be a threat.

Also worth watching: Tony Stewart, who won Thursday's second qualifying race and yesterday’s Busch race, MB2/MBV teammates Joe Nemechek and Scott Riggs, Jarrett’s Robert Yates Racing teammate Elliott Sadler, and the Roush Racing trio of reigning Cup champion Kurt Busch, Matt Kenseth and Mark Martin.

Martin and Rusty Wallace, each starting his final season in NASCAR's top stock car series, saw their chances in the 500 lessen when they got caught up in a wild crash during their 150-miler and heavily damaged their primary cars. Martin was trying to repair his, but Wallace will have to use his backup Sunday and go to the back of the field.

There will also be a lot of attention on Kevin Harvick, whose bump on Johnson's rear bumper ignited the multicar crash and infuriated Johnson and other drivers.

Harvick and Johnson were summoned to the NASCAR hauler in an effort to defuse a dangerous situation. Some drivers were still upset, though, including Nemechek, who also was involved in the crash.

"He cost a bunch of people good race cars, hard work, a lot of money, and they ought to make him pay for it," Nemechek said.

If everyone can stay out of trouble today, nobody will be surprised if Earnhardt's No. 8 Chevrolet and Waltrip's No. 15 Monte Carlo are at the front of the pack heading toward the checkered flag - least of all the DEI drivers.

"We just have to get a little bit better," Junior said. "We're going to work on the chassis a little bit and the motor shop has been working day and night since qualifying, so we've got some extra steam coming. So we're just looking forward to the start of the 500."

Stewart Charges to Busch Win at Daytona

By Mike Harris
Associated Press,February 20

Tony Stewart drove through the grass, passed his buddy Dale Earnhardt Jr. and wound up in Victory Lane. Stewart, the 2002 NASCAR Nextel Cup champion, claimed his first win Saturday on his 42nd career start in the stepladder Busch series.

He also ended Earnhardt's three-race Busch winning streak at Daytona International Speedway.

"I had the drama, had the recovery, had the comeback," said Stewart, who charged to the lead with three laps remaining and won under a yellow flag after a last-lap crash. "I could not have scripted it any more exciting if I was making a movie."

Tony Stewart celebrates his first busch series win (AP)

Stewart, driving a Chevrolet owned by fellow Nextel Cup bad boy Kevin Harvick, led a race-high 46 laps on the 2 1/2-mile oval.

But Stewart's hopes nearly ended with 25 laps to go when a bump from Carl Edwards sent Stewart skidding through the infield grass at 190 mph. Somehow, he kept the car going in the right direction, steering it back onto the high-banked oval.

"I couldn't pay the fines for what I was thinking," Stewart quipped. "There were a lot of things going through my mind. The first was, 'What am I going to tell my mom from the emergency room?'

"It turned out a lot better than I thought it would. I thought I was going to hit the wall. It was just a matter of how hard."

Stewart fell to eighth, then all the way to 17th after his crew needed extra time on the next pit stop to repair the damage.

Meanwhile, the focus turned to Earnhardt. Junior played a waiting game early in the race, content to stay near the back of the pack along with teammate Martin Truex Jr., the defending Busch Series champion.

After the halfway point, Earnhardt and Truex began drafting their way toward the front, quickly moving into the top 10. When the other leaders made their final pit stops during a caution period with 20 laps remaining, Junior stayed on the track and moved into the lead. Truex took only two new tires and came out second.

That's when Stewart began his charge, slicing through the field and moving all the way to fifth on another restart with four to go.

Then, with drafting help from Harvick, Stewart went roaring past the leaders on the outside of turn three. They held on for a 1-2 finish as a three-car accident behind them brought out a caution for the final lap.

"He deserved to win a lot more than he has, and we're glad he broke that wall down," said Harvick, who will use Stewart in five more races this season.

Earnhardt, who will go into Sunday's Daytona 500 as the favorite to repeat last year's victory, shrugged off the third-place finish.

"That's Tony Stewart," Earnhardt said. "He can do anything."

Truex, who will make his first Daytona 500 start Sunday, was encouraged by his fourth-place showing.

"Harvick and Stewart must have ganged up," Truex said. "They were coming like a freight train, and there was no way we were going to stop it."

Kasey Kahne wound up fifth, followed by Robby Gordon, Michael Waltrip, Greg Biffle, 19-year-old Reed Sorenson and Carl Edwards. Cup regulars - the "Buschwhackers" - took eight of the top 10 spots.

"We got ganged up on by those Cup guys," said Sorenson, a Busch rookie.

NASCAR spokesman Mike Zizzo said a postrace inspection revealed Stewart's car was too low by a fraction of an inch, but inspectors later determined that the off-course excursion caused damage to the underside of the car that made it too low.