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Dream a little dream Earnhardt Jr. sees himself winning season opener
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. (Ticker) -- Dale Earnhardt Jr. has always been called a dreamer, especially by his father, the seven-time NASCAR Winston Cup champion who shares the same first name. The elder Earnhardt practices "old school" racing -- beatin' and bangin', tradin' paint and rubbin' fenders. In this school, Dale Earnhardt is so good, he should be awarded a Ph.D. The younger Earnhardt is a Generation X racer, prone to stay up late and sleep even later. That has given him plenty of time to dream. Prior to heading to Daytona in January for preseason testing, Dale Earnhardt Jr. recalled one of his dreams that he is convinced will soon come true. "I'm pretty confident that I'm going to win the Daytona 500 this year, because I dreamed about it," Earnhardt said last month. "You can call me crazy, but I'll be talking to you at the post-race interview, talking about how I did it. "Out front all day, it was so real, it was crazy." So, Dale Jr., how did you do it? Did you win a fender-to-fender duel with your father, inching past him to take the checkered flag? "Well, he wasn't there," Dale Jr. said. In Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s world, dreams do come true. And, there is nothing Mickey Mouse about it because he proved last year that he could win races, with two victories in his rookie season -- three counting the non-points, all-star event known as The Winston.
"I had that dream about a month ago," Earnhardt said. "I remember in the dream that I kept telling myself that I won in my second try. "This is a rare sport where father and son can run together and be competitors at the same time and be successful. Is there an enormous amount of pressure for you to be successful and at the same time are you kind of counting the years when he retires and you'll be the Earnhardt that everybody really watches? Yeah, I think about that a little bit, but the thing you've got to remember is that he's got three, four, or five more years. He's said that a couple of times so by the end, if I haven't figured it out, I won't ever." Dale Jr. looked back at his dad's success. "I look at his career and how he started out and he started out with a rookie title and a championship after that, but then he went through several years of mediocrity where he was just struggling to finish well, but he was still winning races. Hopefully, I will give myself that tolerance of a few years to get it down and get my program and team worked out." Dale Earnhardt Jr. will begin the quest for his dream Friday when practice begins for the Feb. 18 Daytona 500. The run for the pole is scheduled for Saturday where only the front row will be locked into the starting lineup. The remainder of the 43-car field will be determined in the Gatorade Twin 125 qualifying races on February 15 and through time trials. The Earnhardts already have a head start at Daytona as both competed in last weekend's Rolex 24 at Daytona. The two shared a Corvette with Kelly Collins and Andy Pilgrim. The team finished third overall in the prestigious road racing event. "We were quick when we got there," Earnhardt said. "I wanted to be a little bit quicker than I was." Earnhardt always wants to go quicker, which may explain why he was involved in a few spins during the race. Luckily, the spins did not amount to much and he was able to keep going and later celebrate in victory lane. After winning back-to-back titles in the Busch Series, young Earnhardt entered Winston Cup racing as a near cult hero. He gave the MTV generation reason to tune in to NASCAR Winston Cup racing. But with all the hype and hoopla, he lost the Raybestos Rookie of the Year title to Matt Kenseth. "We really didn't have to ask for a lot of the attention, it was always given to us beforehand," Earnhardt said. "In the Winston Cup Series, we came out and won three races and got a lot of attention right out of the box, but as the year went, our success and our performance wasn't that great. "We had a lot of problems in the second half of the season. We all had ego problems, we all had personality problems. We just all lost respect for each other -- me and my teammates and me and my crew. We just kind of let it get to our heads, the success we had at the first of the year, and when we couldn't repeat that like we wanted to. We never really pointed our fingers at each other, but we did let each other know we weren't happy." Although last year had a bit of a nightmarish finish for Earnhardt, he was still allowed to dream. And his dream is to be in victory lane after winning the Daytona 500 on Feb. 18.
© 2003 SportsTicker Enterprises, LP
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