iNSIDE SCOOP: The Perfect Storm

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – What happened Sunday night at Daytona is why we love NASCAR.

In the first race with a revamped Gen-6 car, in the first season where the season-ending Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup is keyed to winning races and on the same track where his father died 13 years and five days earlier, Dale Earnhardt Jr. won the Daytona 500.

NASCAR’s most popular driver for the past however many years (and likely to be for the foreseeable future) won a most important race in a sport where victories needed are often earned when it counts the most.

His father, Dale Sr., won such a race back in 1998, to kick off NASCAR’s 50^th Anniversary season.

It took a six-hour rain delay and a couple of large crashes, but it got done. It also made sure that this year’s version of the Chase will include Earnhardt Jr., who has had trouble putting the cherry on top of the sundae in recent seasons. Snapping a 55-race losing streak, Earnhardt Jr. became the first driver to qualify for the Chase in 2014.

You can’t get much more of a perfect storm than that, and this is in a sport where such things occur on a fairly regular basis.

That Junior won a plate race is not a surprise. That he did it in Daytona to start 2014 kinda is. He and crew chief Steve Letarte will part ways at the end of the season, not because it isn’t working out or anyone is unhappy, but because Letarte is hanging up his headset and going to TV.

He all but promised a series title for Junior before he left, too, and now he has a near-guaranteed shot.

“I know I’m the first feature winner and we are in the Chase,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “I’m pumped up, man.  Trust me, man, we are going to have a blast this year.”

Letarte, for his part, was ecstatic about winning at Daytona for the first time and about his driver’s desire to give him the victories he feels he should have had with Letarte.

 “This is the one,” Letarte said. “You work all winter long at the shop and come down here with your best equipment. They built a great race car and everybody worked really hard. Dale drove a great race. But if you’re going to win one, this is the one you want to win. I’m glad. He knew I really wanted to win this one and he drove a great race.

“There is nothing better I could think of in the world than to give Mr. Hendrick a 500 win in the last year.”

Fast forward to November, and Letarte could be saying the same kinds of things about his first—and last—NASCAR Sprint Cup Series title.