Dale Earnhardt Jr. is flying strong under his new colors, scoring his second high-profile victory of the Sprint cup season for his new team, Hendrick Motorsports. He won the first of the two qualifying races held today to lock in the Daytona 500 starting order. As the two race leaders have already been determined by lap times, this means Junebug will be starting from 3rd place. His victory follows close on the heels of his awesome win at the Budweiser Shootout last Saturday, and marks a serious comeback from a lackluster final season with DEI. If Junior won the Daytona 500 on Sunday, not only would he be driving to victory lane on the 10th anniversary of his late father’s Daytona 500 victory; he’d also be the first driver to win the Shootout, a qualifying race, and the 500 all in a row. In light of all that, I kind of can’t help rooting for him—we’ll see how he does on Sunday!

That’s right: in just a few days, CarDomain’s going to be bringing you exclusive coverage of the Daytona 500! Come by the blog on Sunday, because your very own SuzyBruisy will be on location at Daytona International Speedway for the 50th running of what everyone keeps calling the "Great American Race." We’ll just see how great it is, won’t we! Let me know what you guys wanna see while I’m there—I’m going to have pre-race pit access, I’ll probably already be somewhat overserved, and I’ll be fixing to raise all kinds of heck. Let’s go racin’!

Defending Nextel Cup champion Jimmie Johnson will head up the pack when the green flag flies over Daytona next weekend, starting the season-opening race from the pole position for the second time in his career. Michael Waltrip, who was burned big-time last season after his Toyota team was caught cheating with an unauthorized fuel additive, earned a second-place start during the qualifying session earlier today. He’ll be starting the race in the first row, alongside Johnson in the outside position. Check out the rest of the qualifiying lap times at NASCAR.com, and stay tuned for the Gatorade Duels on Thursday, which will determine the rest of the Daytona starting positions!

No. 29 driver Kevin Harvick, who won last year’s Daytona 500 with a dramatic final-lap steal as the field behind him exploded into fire, predicts that this year’s Great American Race isn’t going to be anything like the ’07 run. For one thing, he says, the Daytona track is worn out and rough, factors which thwart the kind of sustained side-by-side battles that fans have come to expect. Other drivers point to the Car of Tomorrow, whose compatibility with the particular style of racing at Daytona is still largely unknown.  Restrictor-plate racing, which forces cars to clump together in packs and use each other’s draft to slingshot to the front, is complicated by the altered handling and aerodynamics of the CoT. As always at Daytona, little errors amount to big wrecks. 2007 Nextel Cup champ Jimmie Johnson worried about the CoT’s erratic handling in testing at Daytona, and No. 10 driver Patrick Carpentier noted that its fragile shell doesn’t hold up well to the low-grade bumpin’ and bangin’ typical of Daytona, leading to squirrelly steering as the car gets misshapen and fights against aerodynamics. The CoT’s behavior is the big question mark, and it’s what will make it either a sedate and uneventful Daytona or a long, brutal one filled with big wrecks.

Which driver is your pick for this year’s Daytona 500 winner?

Following NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s much-publicized split last year from Dale Earnhardt Inc., the racing team founded by his late father, both sides have done a pretty decent job of keeping the drama down to a dull roar. So when DEI abruptly purged all of the departing driver’s almost-obsolete No. 8 merchandise from its online store last week, Junior shrugged it off with no hard feelings—until he had a chance to think about it. DEI’s "you are dead to us" treatment basically amounts to eliminating virtually any trace that he ever even raced for them, Junior says. And while the gesture only "sort of hurts [his] feelings," he considers it a massive diss to the rest of the team who worked hard on the No. 8 car, many of whom are still with DEI. Still, Junior has confirmed that he isn’t going to lose much time crying about the slight; he’ll be racing for Hendrick Motorsports under his new No. 88 colors at the Daytona 500 in just a couple of weeks!