Junior, Hendrick team up for win

DAYTONA BEACH -- The more things change, the more they stay the same.

New cars, new color schemes and one of the most celebrated driver changes in NASCAR history produced the same old results Saturday night at Daytona International Speedway. Following up on the dominance of Hendrick Motorsports last season, Dale Earnhardt Jr. found his new digs quite to his liking, passing Tony Stewart as the field headed to the white flag en route to the win in the exhbition Budweiser Shootout.

"That was fun," Earnhardt said in victory lane, his first win in his first outing behind the wheel of Hendrick Motorsports' No. 88 Chevrolet. "The shootout is a neat race. I had a blast."

Earnhardt got drafting help from new teammate and 2-time defending Sprint Cup Series champion Jimmie Johnson.

"I have to thank my teammates," said Earnhardt, who also won the 2003 shootout. "I didn't win that race without Jimmie pushing me. I just didn't win it."

Stewart momentarily broke the Hendrick stranglehold on the top-3 positions by driving past Earnhardt, Johnson and Jeff Gordon for the lead with less than 10 laps to go, but the fleet of cars in NASCAR's superteam ganged up to overtake Stewart.

"He's one of the best restrictor plate drivers there's ever been," Stewart said. "He learned a lot from his dad, and I'm not sure he's not better than his dad."

The Earnhardt-Hendrick marriage was apparently blessed in Daytona heaven. Junior's followed in his father's footsteps with a mastery of restrictor-plate racing, and now he's paired with a team that's also had restrictor plate success. Between them, Earnhardt (3) and Gordon (5) have 8 trips to Daytona's storied victory lane in either the Daytona 500 or the Shootout.

Four of those wins are in the 500, a race Earnhardt knows he's capable of winning again. After taking the checkered flag on Saturday night, he told his team over the radio that his car was "probably a 500 winner."

That's bad news for the rest of the field, considering teams usually reserve their best pieces for the 500 and run backup cars or experimental ones in the Shootout. Ultimately, what Earnhardt's win Saturday night does is simply serve notice that Hendrick is poised to pick up right where it left off in 2007 with a 1-2 finish in the final Cup standings.

"I thought we'd have to be a lot more patient (for wins) after all our hard work," Earnhardt said.