DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- With Mark Martin, Jimmie Johnson and now Jeff Gordon all ending up having to go to backups at some point during Speedweeks -- with what seems to be no dropoff in quality -- maybe Dale Earnhardt Jr. had the right perspective Thursday afternoon when he debated with crew chief Lance McGrew whether to park the car after roughing up three of the four corners on his No. 88 Chevrolet during the second qualifying race for Sunday's Daytona 500.

If it's useless to bring a knife to a gun fight, what's it like to look over at the Hendrick Motorsports haulers and realize every car that comes out of the hauler is the equal of the one before?

And yet, Jimmie Johnson, despite being on old tires compared to the competition, beat Kevin Harvick to the stripe -- by perhaps no more than the width of his hand -- to win the first qualifier, and still lamented not having his primary car for the 500. Instead, he'll be driving the one that finished second here last July, and just won the Gatorade Duel.

“

If we could win with this car, we would sleep well the nights leading up to the 500. Clearly we're going to be snoozing well.

”

-- JIMMIE JOHNSON

"The other car is better and you want your best bullet for the Daytona 500," Johnson said. "Our plan today was to go out and race as hard as we could, take chances, see if we could win. If we could win with this car, we would sleep well the nights leading up to the 500. Clearly we're going to be snoozing well."

And nightmares for the rest of the field.

When Johnson had to start at the tail end of the grid after getting caught up in Wednesday's practice crash, it would have been easy for him to cruise around and play it conservatively. Instead, the four-time defending series champion simply drove the wheels off the No. 48 Chevy in the final few laps, impressing crew chief Chad Knaus enough to where he couldn't wait to see a replay.

"Anybody seen the car coming across? Was it sideways? I think it was awesome," Knaus said. "Jimmie did a fantastic job. Like I said, we put him out there at a disadvantage to try to win the race because it was really a situation where we didn't have a whole lot to lose. If we were going to sit around and run 15th or 12th, start 24th in the 500, hell, that's not any fun. We need to go for the win.

"That was our mindset going into it. We were going to go for the win. Whether that was him putting himself in a position to go for it or something we had to do to make it happen. I think he did a fantastic job of blocking those guys. He had two teammates behind him and a very aggressive Kyle Busch behind him, and he was able to hold them off. I think that speaks volumes about how good the car is and what a good restrictor-plate racer Jimmie is, and what a good spotter we have, for that matter."

And the fact that cars from the Hendrick stable are amazingly consistent, and teammates like Johnson and Knaus can take their data and transfer it quickly and efficiently from one to another.

"We do a really good job of documenting what the differences are in the race cars so we know how to adjust them," Knaus said. "We made some significant changes to our cars from the Shootout to the point we raced today. We were able to take exactly what we had in the car yesterday before we crashed and convert that over through some relatively simple math and put it in this racecar.

"As long as you have good documentation, know you have a good car, you can make it happen."

So what message did Johnson think he sent to the rest of the garage with that kind of a run?

"Well, I hope it says that we can win the Daytona 500, and to take us seriously," Johnson said. "I don't think I've been proving myself in that regard on track since the COT has been around. We ran well in the July race here last season. But outside of that, we've been looking for a variance in setup, I've been trying to understand the draft better. I think things are coming together. For this weekend, everybody wants this big prize, everybody wants to win the Daytona 500. I think we sent a message today."

Knaus mentioned always making sure you have bullets left in your gun for Speedweeks. If Thursday was any indication, Hendrick Motorsports is locked and loaded.

The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.