Before & after: Coke Zero 400

July 6, 6:23 PMDale Earnhardt Jr. ExaminerLindsey Marks

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Junior at pre-race press conference in Daytona (AP Photo/Terry Renna)

Heading to Daytona International Speedway for the second time this season, the #88 team seemed as excited, if not more so than back in February. Knowing that Dale Jr. has such a great record there, it is no wonder that the whole team was looking for a victory (or at least a top-10 finish) to turn their season around. Unfortunately, the Big One bit them and Junior ended up with a DNF and slipped out of the top-20 in the point standings.

Here’s what Junior had to say before and after the race:

Before – “I've liked what I've felt from the race cars over the last couple of weeks. Lance (McGrew) and I seem to communicate well. He's very excited and we are able to kind of root each other on throughout the race, it seems. And the team has a great attitude and it seems to get better with each run. We seem to show a little more promise. Everybody is really working so hard. I remember in 2004 and even as recent as last year, I don't remember working this hard to run better than we're running now. Obviously once we get back to where we want to be, we'll appreciate that much more than we probably did in the past because with how competitive the CoT has made this sport, if you fall behind a little bit, it takes more to get back than it used to. You used to be able to rebound in a week or two. But if you get behind in this sport now, there is a chance you may not recover for some time. So it has definitely been a trying time and it was really hard and our team was really, really low. But just knowing where we were and how I felt two months ago to now, I can definitely say it's a big difference for us. And there's no one person or one thing that really deserves credit. We just made a couple of changes and everything seems to be moving in the right direction. So we'll just try to keep it up. It's going to be a good weekend hopefully. This is a good track for me.”

After – “I couldn't really tell, you know. A couple of guys got together and I just tried to stay high and the No. 00 (David Reutimann) was crossed up and we got together with him pretty hard and tore the upper A-frame off the chassis. So the car is tore up too bad to get back out there. But we just got it driving good, you know, and just freed it up enough to where it could go up through there and we was just trying to get around them. Everybody was in the way at that point and we were just picking them off one at a time… So the National Guard Chevrolet was just getting going. We had just freed the car up enough and was moving toward the front and the car was driving good. I thought we had a shot of getting up there and mixing it up with the leaders.”

Unfortunately Daytona did not go as Junior, his team and his fans would have liked. But, this week brings another track and another chance for the #88 team to get a finish worthy of their hard work.