Earnhardt experienced 500 heartache with his father

LAS VEGAS -- Even when he's on the other side of the continent, the Daytona 500 -- and the role it played in his family's history -- is never far from Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s thoughts.

On Monday during testing at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Earnhardt talked at length about the emotions involved in winning stock-car racing's biggest prize, and the mental toughness his father needed when he came so close, year after year, without taking home the trophy (complete audio).

Earnhardt never wanted to find himself in that situation.

"It scared me to death that I would be racing for 20 years, still trying to get the win," he said. "How many times will you have the opportunity, be in good cars, to be able to do it? I always worried that I would lose all the Daytona 500s in the cars that I should have won it in. That's kind of how it went for him."

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In Junior's mind, the toughest of the near-misses to take was in 1990.

"... When he cut that tire on the backstretch, that was one of the hardest things to understand," Earnhardt said. "I was a sophomore in high school, old enough to really kind of understand what was going on around me. I just couldn't believe that.

"I know there's worse things that can happen to you, and there's people that deal with worse, people that have it hard. But, dang, man, I wanted that race so bad. That was such a rough way to go."

In fact, the younger Earnhardt worried how that might affect his father, but his fears turned out to be unfounded. Instead, he learned a valuable lesson that he continues to carry with him.

"I didn't know what kind of person he was going to be when he got home," Earnhardt said. "Whether my daddy was going to be different the rest of his life.

"You know, he dealt with it. That made me admire him more. You know, that made me hopefully a better person just experiencing that and being that close to him and watching him go through it. When I deal with those types of things, when you deal with losses, when things don't go your way, maybe I'm better off having witnessed him doing it."

So what is it like to win the Daytona 500?

"It's hard to answer that question," said Junior, who won the race in 2004. "It is hard to try to tell someone that hasn't ever been there what it feels like, 'cause it's just the craziest things. It's a great, great feeling. You ride that for days and days. You know, it's just amazing.

"... When we won the Daytona 500, I carried that feeling for months. I didn't even have to try. It's so hard to win. There's so many great drivers that never won it, that deserve it. So the wave of relief was apparent."

For Junior, the prestige of the race -- and the feeling that comes with winning it -- go hand in hand, which is why teams work so hard and expend so much time and energy in trying to win this one event.

"You know, the races in the season are so important at every stop," he said. "You tell me why we focus so much on that race and why we test so hard and why we massage those cars more than any other car that we'll race the rest of the year.

"I mean, [we] spend hours on them damn things, and it don't make one bit a sense that it's more important than the other races. But it is, and it always will be."