Earnhardt pays surprise visit to opening test day (cont'd)

It was all very spur of the moment. Earnhardt and public relations man Mike Davis were chatting online at about 1 a.m. Monday, when the driver was struck by the urge to go to Daytona. Davis scrambled some pilots, and by 8 a.m. the group was airborne. Earnhardt was in the Daytona garage area before even some of the drivers who were testing.

"I'm just ready for the season to start," said Earnhardt, who flew back to the Charlotte, N.C., area early Monday afternoon. "I'll be bored as everybody else when I'm testing myself. I don't know what's different about coming here and goofing off, it's just a lot easier to do that. But when we come here to test, I'll be bored and wishing it was only two days. But I've just been looking forward to the season to get started. The cars are at the racetrack, and I felt like coming to check it out. That's all there is to it."

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Boredom certainly played a part in the decision. Other than a vacation to Australia, Earnhardt's offseason has been a blitz of photo and commercial shoots for his new car sponsors. Driver No. 88 was ready to see some wheels turn.

"I didn't have anything going on today," he said. "I went to a race to watch in Australia, and hadn't done that in a long time. It was fun to be at a racetrack with no responsibilities other than just eating a bunch of junk food and hanging and laughing with your buddies. It's fun to sit and watch everyone else work. This is the first day, and they'll learn a lot today and hopefully I can hear some of the conversations and pick up on some of the stuff they tried to get, the big early gains that they'll find. Because the next two days will be nitpicky stuff for half a tenth [a second] here and there. [Monday] they go out and gain two- to four-tenths a run early on, and I wanted to be here to see that and know what was going on."

Earnhardt's transition from Dale Earnhardt Inc. to Hendrick Motorsports has been underway in earnest since October, when crew chief Tony Eury Jr. left DEI to begin work at his new shop. Now it's a matter of Earnhardt building chemistry with his rest of the Hendrick organization, something Monday's trip to Daytona didn't hurt.

"I think the fact that he's here today means a lot," Gordon said. "It shows where his focus is, and how fired up he is about this season. I think they're going to have a great season. What that necessarily means, I don't know. I mean, we'll just have to wait and see. I know that the equipment is there. Everything is there. But you've got to get the chemistry and you've got to get all the other ingredients it takes to be successful."

And if you're wondering whether Earnhardt could have taken a test run in one of his teammates' cars -- well, so did he.

"That's against the rules," he said. "I already asked about it."