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Earnhardt Jr. says he's no lock in Daytona 500

Submitted by SHNS on Fri, 02/15/2008 - 13:11

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- So just how strong is Dale Earnhardt Jr. here this week?Is he the driver to beat in Sunday's Daytona 500?NASCAR's season opener is shaping up as a head-to-head battle between Earnhardt and the rest of Rick Hendrick's powerful Chevrolet operation and Tony Stewart and the rest of Joe Gibbs' new-to-Toyota group.That's assuming all those unexpected engine problems the two groups faced the past few days have been resolved."It's a good car, and we won the 150," Earnhardt said after his second win of Speedweeks, Thursday's first 150. "But I don't feel it's a dominant car. So I don't feel the 500 is mine to lose."The 500 is just a totally different race. It's a long race. You overcome things, you work through things. You get passed, and you pass people. Things happen, and you deal with them. And more things happen, and you deal with them. And you just try to be around there at the end. It's hard to do."You can think about a 70-lap race (like the Shootout) and think, 'Hey, this is what we need to do.' But in the 500 you've just got to run all day long. I think we've got a great shot at winning the 500. We can't sing a lot quite yet; we've got a lot of work in front of us. And we've got to keep the same work ethic.... and we should be fine."The depth at Hendrick sure makes the driver's job a lot easier."Earnhardt Jr. won the 500 back in 2004, three years after his father, Dale Sr., was killed in a crash in the final turn of the race. The Earnhardts joined Lee and Richard Petty and Bobby and Davey Allison as the only father-son combinations to win the Daytona 500.(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)