Juan Pablo Montoya and Brian Vickers race door to door in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Gatorade duel. (Photo: Getty Images)

Less sanguine about the outcome of the day was Dale Earnhardt Jr., the Daytona 500 pole-sitter. Earnhardt led the first five laps of the second Duel, but after some aggressive bump-drafting, his Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet looked like he was racing at Martinsville or North Wilkesboro, beaten and banged up.

Once Earnhardt and crew chief Lance McGrew figured out the No. 88 Chevy had no chance of victory, Earnhardt dropped back in the field and finished 21st. “We didn't want to get up in there and race too hard and risk tearing the car up and having to pull the back up car out,” said Earnhardt. “That is a lot of work.”

Earnhardt had some choice words over the radio for his fellow drivers over the radio, as did Montoya. “It was a lot of fun,” said Montoya. “It was fun until (Brian) Vickers screwed me, you know? We were running up front and Vickers, on the restart, got inside me and dropped me all the way to the back.

Earnhardt's teammate Jeff Gordon tore up his car when he was caught in a wreck in the first Shootout that began when Michael Waltrip spun. Gordon will start the Daytona 500 in a back-up car on Sunday.

“You've worked all month long to try and win the Daytona 500 and we're not going to beat the side out and mud it and just try to go for 20 spots on the grid,” said Gordon's crew chief. “If you can't win from 43rd but you could have won from 20th, you don't have a chance anyway.”

The hardest luck driver might have been Casey Mears, who narrowly missed making the 500 in the second Duel. “It's just disappointing because we were in great position to transfer,” said Mears, who is with the start-up Keyed-Up Motorsports team.

Tom Jensen is the Editor in Chief for SPEEDtv.com, the former Executive Editor of NASCAR Scene and a contributing Editor for TruckSeries.com. He is the author of "Cheating: The Bad Things Good NASCAR Nextel Cup Racers Do In Pursuit of SPEED," and has appeared on television and radio shows to discuss NASCAR racing. Jensen is the past President of the National Motorsports Press Association. Jensen is the 1997 National Motorsports Press Association Writer of the Year and has won numerous national and state awards for news reporting, columns and feature writing. The Answer Man is back at SPEEDtv.com. Tom Jensen answers your questions during every race week and looks forward to hearing from you - please e-mail it to