Daytona 500: Junior ready to rumble

DAYTONA BEACH -- Just 2 years ago, Tony Stewart said that the bump drafting at Daytona International Speedway had gotten so out of hand that drivers were putting themselves on the verge of serious injury.

On Friday night, Stewart got into the back of Kurt Busch during practice for the Budweiser Shootout -- prompting a game of bumper tag on pit road and rumors of a physical confrontation in the NASCAR hauler during a disciplinary session. On the heels of NASCAR president Brian France suggesting he wanted drivers to be free to be themselves, the season opened with high emotions.

But NASCAR's hush-hush response to what happened between Stewart and Busch -- "what happens in the hauler, stays in the hauler" -- left the Sprint Cup Series drivers wondering just what would be tolerated in the season-opening Daytona 500 here.

"Nobody is going to go down pit road and put anybody into danger," Dale Earnhardt Jr. said after winning the exhibition Bud Shootout. "You’re not going to get away with that, but on the racetrack I think they are going to go back to letting us run over each other it looks like, so just get ready.

"I’m going to walk around with my dukes up all day long. Be ready I’m telling you, you got to watch both hands."

If anybody's ready for restrictor plate-racing, it would have to be Earnhardt. Stewart compared him to his late father, accepted in some circles as the greatest Daytona driver in history. Earnhardt Jr. dominated racing for a stretch while in DEI cars, winning twice in Cup points races in the No. 8 he made famous, and now winning the Shootout in a Rick Hendrick-owned Car of Tomorrow.

Earnhardt Jr. simply said he enjoys competing on the circuit's biggest tracks.

"I embrace that," he said. "(Daytona) is where we lost (Earnhardt Sr.) and I want to keep whipping it, you know what I’m saying. I want to make it a special place.

"And there was a time when it seemed like all I could win was plate races and I didn’t want to take credit for it because that seemed like that was all I was going to be was a plate-race winner, but I’ve embraced it. After I won four in a row in Talladega, beat (Buddy) Baker’s record, I started embracing it because it was special to me and Daytona is a special place."

Special enough to put his dukes up and fight for a win at one of the places that means the most to him -- so long as NASCAR allows the boys to slug it out on Sunday.