In the frantic sprint called the Budweiser Shootout, what will be going on inside the cars Saturday night?
A lot of laughing.
“You can’t help but laugh at all the things that are going on out there,” said Dale Earnhardt Jr., who won in 2003 and helped Dale Jarrett win last year.
“Guys are moving around, and you’re drafting down each straightaway with somebody different, every time,” Earnhardt said.
“And you’re like, `Yeah! This is all right, man! We’re going to the front!’
“And then he shoots around you and drafts with somebody else. It’s fun.”
No championship points are involved, so there’s no pressure. The Shootout is a bonus race for pole winners from the previous season, and former winners of the event. There are 20 drivers in the 70-lap, 175-mile race.
It’s a rollicking good time for all involved, and “it’s definitely a race for the fans,” said two-time winner Jeff Gordon.
The drivers just try to enjoy the ride on the whims of the turbulent drafts at Daytona International Speedway.
“Last year we were shuffling around and I got the bad end of the stick,” Earnhardt said, laughing all through his recollection of the situation. “I ended up in position to push somebody else to the win, but I didn’t have the opportunity to put myself in position to win.
“So I’m like, `All right, what are my options?’ I basically have one, and that’s pushing [giving an aerodynamic shove to] the guy in front of me.
“But I pushed like [crazy] and ended up pushing Dale Jarrett into the lead, and he won the race. We ran out of laps. If I’d had a couple more laps I might have been able to make a run at him.”
Then Earnhardt shrugged and laughed some more: “If we’d had two laps I might have been able to make a run at a win; if we’d had four laps I probably would have passed him and then got passed myself, and got beat anyway.”
Even the starting order is literally the luck of the draw. Jarrett will start on the pole by virtue of drawing the No. 1 position in a ceremony Thursday. Gordon sees practical information to be gained at the party, some of which can be translated to the big one, the Feb. 20 Daytona 500.
“[The Shootout] gives us an opportunity to learn a little bit about the race car, the racetrack and what we’re going to have in store for ourselves the rest of the week,” Gordon said. “For those of us who are in it, I think it’s a bit of an advantage to get a little bit of extra drafting practice, and laps under our belts, to get comfortable [for] Thursday.”
He referred to the twin 150-mile qualifying races, expanded this year from the traditional 125, that determine most of the Daytona 500 starting order.
