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DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — He tested at Phoenix earlier this year, qualified on the outside of the front row for Sunday’s Daytona 500 (2 p.m. ET, FOX, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) and on Thursday he led the bulk of his Can-Am Duel qualifying race before finishing fifth.
Dale Earnhardt Jr. is officially back.
Today marks his return to the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series, and no one is more pleased about it than the driver of the No. 88 Chevrolet for Hendrick Motorsports.
“I really had fun,” Earnhardt said Thursday evening after a strong return at a track where he’s typically one of a handful of drivers expected to run well. “I hated to lose but still we have to be aware of how far we’ve come to get back here. To go out there and lead all those laps and be able to make some good smart moves, it felt great.”
The road back has been a long one for the 42-year-old Earnhardt, who missed the final 18 races of 2016 while recovering from a concussion. It marked the second time he had been sidelined by such an injury, and he admitted there were times he questioned what his racing future held.
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“There was a lot of time during the recovery where there were days I was 90 percent sure I wasn’t going to drive again,” he said. “There were days when it was 50 percent. It was just moving all over the place depending on what I felt that day. Your recovery is up and down, you have good days and bad days. …
“When it came down to it, I had to decide for myself if I wanted to drive anymore. I’m not going to race because of any other reason than I want to be out there.”
Earnhardt will roll off second alongside Elliott, the pole winner, for the 59th running of the Daytona 500. He is a two-time winner of the “Great American Race” and one of the favorites based on past success and this year’s efforts thus far.
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Restrictor-plate races are breeding grounds for multi-car crashes, with cars running two-, three- and sometimes four-wide, a dozen or more rows deep at 200-plus mph. Earnhardt doesn’t dwell on the possibility of another accident and what might result.
“I don’t want to wreck to sort of quantify my recovery,” he said. “I think should that happen and I come out the other side of it feeling great, that will add a ton of confidence. I can’t sit here and say that I know exactly how I’m going to react in those situations with confidence. So yeah, when I go through that process, there’s a box or two to check that aren’t checked yet.”
Three-time series champion Tony Stewart hung up his NASCAR uniform at the end of the ’16 season. Two of Stewart’s final four years driving for Stewart-Haas Racing were cut short due to injuries the Columbus, Indiana, native suffered in non-NASCAR events.
But there was no apprehension about climbing back in the car following lengthy recovery periods, he said.
“Never. It was more excitement to get back because you have to remember, we’re drivers,” Stewart, the winner of 49 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series races, said. “That’s what we want to do, drive.
“When you have an injury, all it is is a pain in the ass. It’s keeping you from doing what you want to do. That’s why you heard so many drivers praise Junior last year (when) he chose not to run. And that’s hard.”
Fellow driver Martin Truex Jr. has a close relationship with Earnhardt — the two were teammates from 2004-07 at Dale Earnhardt Inc. and spend time away from the track each fall on hunting trips.
“I know he’s got a lot on his shoulders,” Truex said. “A lot of people put a lot of pressure on him, obviously. I think in a lot of ways he sometimes feels like he needs to be here for other people. But hopefully he made the decision based on what’s best for him. I think he did. I know he’s excited about racing still. He obviously still loves it and wants to do it and hopefully things will all work out for him.”
It has been 20 races since Earnhardt won his last race and just five — due to his shortened ’16 season — since his last top five. Sunday affords the opportunity to reset both those streaks. After that? He’s yet to win a championship at NASCAR’s top level, but has finished as high as third. And, yes, he did say if he wins the title in ’17 “it would be hard to not call it a career.”
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He has a new outlook and seems to be at peace with the road he’s traveled. For the longest time, he said “I let racing be who I was instead of what I did.
“Like Richard Petty said, I’ve got a whole other life beyond driving and I really believe that,” Earnhardt said. “I’ve got a lot of things I’d love to do. Even outside of having a family, there are a lot of things in business that I’d love to see if I could succeed at. I think we got a glimpse of what that would be like; it looks pretty awesome.”
For now, though, the Daytona 500 and another season of crisscrossing the country await. And Earnhardt is more than OK with that.
“Like I said, I crave to drive the car,” he said. “I love the position I’m in with the team I’m with, (crew chief) Greg (Ives) and the guys, and until that feeling … and that ‘want’ to be there is gone, I want to keep going.”