Hot Daytona Nights

I’m not talking about the usual party scene at the Ocean Deck, either.

A trip to Daytona is not complete without at least one cold one at the Ocean Deck, where the elite meet to cool off in the ocean breeze after a long day—or night—at Daytona International Speedway.

Sadly, since the Coke Zero 400 went so long, it was not a complete trip to Daytona for ol’ SCOOP. A 90-minute rain delay and a 20-minute red flag to clean all the pieces/parts of crashed stock cars combined to remove this particular item from the to-do list.

Oh, well. Been there, done that, got the bar bill!

Did make it to Krystal (they closed the one in Charlotte years ago) and Maui Nix, but Atlantic Sounds was closed every time I drove past. If you’re ever in Daytona with an hour or two to kill and you like music of every genre, that’s the place for you.

Conveniently located on International Speedway Blvd. just west of the bridge to the beach side of the city, the store is jammed with every jam you can think of, and some you didn’t know existed.

I digress. The racing at Daytona, especially with the new NASCAR Nationwide Series car, was stellar. Dale Earnhardt Jr. got a much-needed victory in the Wrangler No. 3, and he got out of the car saying that was the last time he’ll drive that car. “That’s it for me with the No. 3,” a happy Earnhardt Jr. said in Victory Lane.

It isn’t that he doesn’t want to honor his late father, or enthuse Junior Nation. It’s the pressure.

Earnhardt Jr. and cousin Tony Eury Jr. knew that Friday night’s race was a win-or-go-broke deal. If they didn’t win it, they would be crushed. Anything less would be a double defeat, and for those two, double defeats became more the norm than the exception.

You can’t know what is banging around in Junior’s head. First, hardly anyone knows him well enough to figure that out, and second, unless he trusts you, he’s not going to tell you. Third, it’s kind of hard to be an icon when everyone is telling you that you aren’t your daddy and never will be, but expecting at the same time to prove that you are the Second Coming by winning, winning hard and taking no prisoners.

Such is the box that Dale Jr. lives in. How he hasn’t run screaming from the sport like MacCauley Culkin in “Home Alone” is beyond my ability to understand. One day in that Col. Sanders pressure cooker and you or I would be a candidate for that little place they take you after the nice young men in the sharp white coats show up in the twinkie truck.

He’s famous, no doubt, and rich beyond the understanding of us mere salaried mortals. He has stuff and can do stuff that you and I would have to hit the lottery to afford. If he wanted, he could just pull a Frodo Baggins, put on the One Ring and disappear forever.

He hasn’t, and he won’t, at least anytime soon. He can’t, for one thing, but he won’t, because it’s what he knows and what Junior Nation expects. NASCAR, for one, would take a rather dim view of that, as nearly half of the apparel sales in the sport belong to him.

I’m not a Junior Nation member, but I have immense respect for what the man does, week in and week out. Even when his father was killed at Daytona, he was out there to face the music…largely by himself. His stepmother wasn’t around, so he bore the familial duty of representing. Hard to do when your heart and soul has been ripped from your chest, don’t you think?

Asked what his father would have thought of his victory on Friday night, Junior shrugged.

“I was so worried I wasn’t gonna win it,” he said in Victory Lane. “Without winning, what was the point? We’ve been losing so long. I worked hard to win it, and so did everyone involved with this. This is for Daddy. I’m proud that he made it into the Hall of Fame and I think he’d be proud of this.

“Richard (Childress) said Daddy would have been happy with this. I never knew what I was going to get with Daddy—he was a loose cannon. But I think he’d be proud.”

Whether he would be or not, I think Dale Jr. needs to be proud of what he did on Friday. He needs to be proud of himself, and for once not worry about what everyone else thinks of him or his racing or his beard.

By the way, you do know that we came up with the de facto name of that red stuff on Junior’s chin, don’t you? It’s called…Whisker River!

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