Driver #8: Dale Earnhardt, Jr.

(Page 4: Qualifying)

The qualifying system for the Daytona 500 is pretty complicated. The front two positions are determined by the Bud Pole qualifying session. Cover the thin ribbon of 2.5 miles of asphalt in less time than anyone else, and you are given the number one starting position. The Bud Pole session (one car runs at a time for two timed laps; only your best lap counts) takes place eight days before the 500. The team that wins the pole position gets to hype the media for the entire week leading up to the race. The rest of the forty-three-car field is determined by qualifying times, or where you finish in one of the 125-mile qualifying races the Thursday before the 500, or even where you ranked in last year's Winston point standings. It's difficult to understand, but the important thing—for me, anyway—is to make it into the starting field, no matter what.

There are fifty-six cars going out separately for Bud Pole qualifying, one by one, to clock their best lap time. We draw the forty-eighth spot, so we have to wait for several hours before it's our turn. It feels like a month. I can't stand waiting in the garage or my motor home watching on television, so I help the guys push the car to its spot in the qualifying line.

While I am standing there, Dad comes over to give me a little pep talk and some tips about the track conditions. He looks strange in a different uniform for this race. Chevy has paid big money to paint his car in a special "Tasmanian Devil" scheme that is a big part of their Monte Carlo advertising campaign. He has been in a black car with a white driver's uniform for so long it's jarring to see him in a different uniform for just one race. Dale Jarrett, the current champion, and Jeff Burton both come by and wish me well. It feels weird to be racing against guys who I had looked up to for so many years.

Alone in my thoughts in the middle of all of the noise and hoopla, I wait my turn to qualify. There are an unbelievable number of photographers and video camera crews on the other side of the pit wall and a huge group of fans. I try to tune it all out and relax. But my gut is full of nervous rumbling. I notice one of the fans wearing one of my new souvenir T-shirts. The shirt says, The future has arrived. Damn right.

Yes, sir. The future will arrive real soon. Finally.

When I get out on the track for my qualifying laps, all I think about is driving the car. At Daytona, you can keep your foot on the throttle all the way around, so it's more about the car and whether the team has set it up to slice through the wind as efficiently as possible. The driver is just a passenger for much of the lap. We were looking for a particular lap time, and we managed to knock a half second off of that, but my qualifying time is only twenty-second fastest. Good but not great. I still might be able to finish poorly in the 125-mile qualifier and make the 500 on that lap time, but it's no sure thing and we don't want to take any chances.

I know that I have to run a good qualifying race on Thursday. That means a finish of at least fifteenth or better to ensure a spot in Sunday's lineup. But the most important thing is to finish. You don't want to get too aggressive, wreck the car, and not make the 500 at all. Sometimes it's totally out of your control. Someone else crashes and you get swept up into the accident. Or maybe a piece of the car—a two-dollar part that never failed before—breaks apart and you drop out of the race. It's not your fault, but you are still going home heartbroken.

Before Thursday's qualifying race, there is more waiting to do. There are two 125-mile qualifying races on the same day, and I'm in the second one. So I get to watch the first one and maybe learn something. I watch from the top of the transporter that the team uses to haul our race cars and a garageful of parts, pieces, and tools from track to track. The view from there is great and I get a feel for how huge and impressive the track is. The banked turns are three stories high from top to bottom and banked at 31 degrees. They call this a "self-cleaning" track, since most of the debris from a wreck will just slide down to the apron below.

When fans see that high banking for the first time—in person, instead of on television—they get a little dizzy. Then they start thinking about the great racing with lots of passing that they're going to see here. At least they used to. In recent years the races at Daytona have been boring because it has become so hard to pass. For the last ten to fifteen years, NASCAR has used restrictor plates to reduce the horsepower of the engine— slowing the cars down so they don't take off and fly through the air or into the grandstands. These plates restrict the power and make it very hard to pass unless you are a master at "the draft."

The draft occurs when cars are pulled along by the vacuum that is created by the car in front. Working together, two or more cars in the draft can all go faster than any one car alone. A car going nearly two hundred miles per hour makes a big hole in the air, and if you get inside of that hole, you have very little air resistance to move through and you get pulled along at a higher speed. You also give the car in front of you a push. Even if you are many yards behind, the draft helps your car speed up and catch the car or cars in front of you. The problem is, if you pull out to pass the car in front, your car suddenly drops out of the draft and is hit by a huge wall of air. It's like having a parachute on the back of the car.

Dad always hated the restrictor plates. He hates the reduced power because it takes away a lot of things that a driver can do to get to the front. Or maybe he just wants us to believe he hates them, because he has won a lot of restrictor-plate races and is considered the very best that ever raced with the plates. Some people claim Dad can "see the air" in the draft, but I think he just has a deeper understanding of how to use the airflow to his advantage. He knows how to use it to help his car or to mess with another car. He also has great peripheral vision, so he can see what is happening around him and is able to react quickly. Sometimes he makes moves where I think he must be able to see behind him.

After the first qualifying race, I spend a little time listening to the drivers who have just finished. A lot of them are talking about how their cars didn't handle right once the tires wore out. This might be something we can use in our race. Mainly, I need to be conservative with my tires so they will last the full distance. I'm thinking about that as I climb in my No. 8 Chevrolet. I want a top-fifteen finish to guarantee me a spot in the big race. But today my motto is Better Safe Than Sorry. If I can get into the starting field on Sunday, then I can really hang it out.

When the green flag drops, I run cautiously for the first few laps. I try to get the feel of the track and stay up near the front. The team has done a great job of setting up the car, and it flows in traffic. I'm in eleventh position but I'm faster than a lot of the cars around me. I start passing people, moving up on the leader and exciting the crowd. At one point my car handles so well that I go up high near the wall in Turn 3 and get three-wide with two other cars and pass them both. My crew insists the people in the stands were gasping for air when I made that move. You aren't supposed to do that at Daytona! Especially not if you're a rookie! But if you're a racer and you've got a car that can pass people, what you do is . . . you pass 'em. That's what I'm paid to do.

The move gets me into fourth place, and although I want to move up a few more spots, time runs out and I finish the race there. I am not just happy with the way I ran; I'm overwhelmed.

"We're in the Daytona 500!!!" I scream into the radio as I come across the finish line. "We're in the Daytona fucking 500!"

Copyright © 2002 by Dale Earnhardt, Jr. All rights reserved. Posted with permission of http://www.twbookmark.com. Click here for ordering information for "Dale Earnhardt, Jr.: Driver #8" at Amazon.com.