DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — With a full moon overhead and the solar but to crest the horizon, Dale Earnhardt Jr. stood close to his group’s hauler Wednesday morning and watched as JR Motorsports’ first Cup automobile was unloaded within the Daytona Worldwide Speedway storage.
Earnhardt pulled out his telephone to seize the second. Automotive proprietor Rick Hendrick had inspired him to take action.
When JR Motorsports — which first competed within the Xfinity Sequence in 2005 — introduced January 15 that it might subject its first Cup entry and search to qualify for the Daytona 500 with Justin Allgaier, Earnhardt vowed to be there when the storage first opened.
Fourteen hours after strolling together with his crew and the No. 40 automobile to the group’s storage stall Wednesday morning, Earnhardt blended into the gang on pit street and melted away after Allgaier missed securing a spot within the Daytona 500 by eight-hundredths of a second.
“I believe he’s slightly gut-punched proper now,” Kelley Earnhardt stated about her brother Dale after qualifying.
Considered one of 9 non-chartered vehicles entered, there isn’t any assure that Earnhardt’s automobile might be on the grid for Sunday’s Daytona 500.
All just isn’t misplaced. Allgaier will get one other probability to make the five hundred in Thursday’s qualifying races.
About 45 minutes after Martin Truex Jr. and Jimmie Johnson secured the 2 qualifying spots for non-chartered vehicles and compelled Allgaier to attend yet another evening to seek out out if he’ll be within the 500, Dale Earnhardt Jr. offered an .
“Rattling it woulda been good to lock in tonight. However we get to return again tomorrow and race our means into the Daytona 500 in a twin. Dwelling the dream.”
He and Austin Cindric are on the entrance row for the 67th Nice American Race.
Mentioned Kelley about what the group faces: “(Thursday) simply worries me as a result of all the pieces just isn’t inside our management.”
That is all the time the case at drafting tracks. A mistake a number of rows forward can result in a crash that collects a number of vehicles behind. That would alter who makes this 12 months’s Daytona 500.
However because the third quickest of the 9 non-chartered vehicles, Allgaier has a number of methods to make the Daytona 500. If he finishes highest among the many non-chartered vehicles in his race, he’s within the subject. If Johnson or Martin Truex Jr. finishes highest amongst non-chartered vehicles of their qualifying race, Allgaier is within the Daytona 500.
Allgaier is scheduled to begin seventeenth amongst 23 vehicles within the first qualifying race (7 p.m. ET Thursday on FS1). The opposite non-chartered vehicles in his race are: Truex (beginning twelfth), Helio Castroneves (twentieth), Chandler Smith (twenty second) and JJ Yeley (twenty third).
Former NASCAR Cup champions qualify on velocity to say two of the spots out there to open vehicles.
Nonetheless, Allgaier got here inside .08 seconds of not needing to fret about Thursday’s qualifying races. The place does that distinction come from over a 2.5-mile observe?
“After I have a look at the (knowledge), it nearly appears to be like like possibly we caught a little bit of a headwind on the frontstretch, possibly form of slowed us down,” Allgaier advised NBC Sports activities.
Allgaier then started to look forward.
“You may’t dangle your head concerning the effort right now,” he stated, “since you’ve nonetheless bought an opportunity to get it (Thursday).”
Wednesday’s end result provides Dale Earnhardt Jr. one other day to relish — as a Cup automobile proprietor — all that’s Daytona.
“Most automobile proprietor usually are not considering that this may very well be the one and solely time they do this,” Earnhardt advised NBC Sports activities final week about his need to be within the storage, on the qualifying grid and across the automobile and group as a lot as doable at Daytona.
“Simply in case that we by no means get again to that scenario or that chance to enter a Cup race, I need to be sure that there wasn’t something about it that handed me by or I wasn’t in a position to expertise.
“I miss all of that. I miss that as a driver. Exhibiting up at Daytona, how good is our automobile? I’ve been watching the fellows put it collectively for 3 months.
“How are we going to qualify? How is it going to race? Standing on that grid, standing on the market in that lineup for qualifying at Daytona, it’s only a particular second, ready in your alternative to go, ready in your alternative to climb in.
“It’s one of many nice issues about being a competitor, whether or not you’re the driving force, crew chief or the automobile proprietor, you’re a competitor. I form of miss, I miss the feelings you undergo, the highs, the lows, the anxiousness of efficiency, and can we make it? Will we get in?”
He’ll discover out Thursday evening.
