Standing next to his team’s car before Thursday’s qualifying race at Daytona International Speedway, Dale Earnhardt Jr. looked at his sister, Kelley Earnhardt Miller, in amazement. “God dang,” he said to her before the invocation,

Earnhardt and his JR Motorsports team celebrated Thursday night at the track where he both won two Daytona 500s and suffered the loss of his father on the last lap in the 2001 race.

"Where else do you go and barely make the field and cry tears of joy? Nowhere," Earnhardt said of the fabled speedway and race.