Dale Earnhardt Jr. is Back, is he?????

NASCAR Power Rankings: No Dale Jr.www.cbssportsline.com
The post-Daytona 500 Power Rankings are always somewhat tricky.
Run at one of only two restrictor-plate tracks on the schedule, the race is rarely a great indicator of future performance. Last year, none of the top five and only two of the top 10 finishers went on to secure a spot in the Chase.
Four-time defending series champion Jimmie Johnson won the 2006 Daytona 500 en route to his first series title, but his past three championship seasons started with finishes of 39th, 27th and 31st at Daytona. Sunday, he walked away 35th because of a broken axle.
"It's a long season and we came out of here last year with a crashed race car and still came back," Johnson said. "We have a little work ahead of us."
As the 2010 Daytona 500 champion, recent history doesn't bode well for Jamie McMurray. Two of the past three Daytona 500 champions have failed win another points race after their victory (Kevin Harvick 2007 and Ryan Newman 2008), while Newman and Matt Kenseth, the 2009 winner, failed to make the Chase that year.
Even the final results don't tell the whole story of who ran well and who didn't.
Take Dale Earnhardt Jr., for instance. Though Earnhardt started on the front row alongside Hendrick Motorsports teammate and pole winner Mark Martin, he actually spent much of the race outside the top 10. A furious rally on fresh right-side tires allowed him to rally from 10th to second over the course of the final two laps.
David Reutimann snagged fifth, but like Earnhardt, he wasn't a factor most of the day, with an average running position of 15th.
Defending champion Kenseth was missing in action throughout, spending just 15 laps running in the top 15, yet when the smoke cleared, he wound up eighth.
On the other end of the spectrum was Kevin Harvick. He led a race-high 41 laps and was the leader for the final green-white-checkered restart, but he "zigged when [he] should have zagged" and was shuffled back to seventh as he finished.
Typically in years past, I'd wait until after California to make significant changes to the Power Rankings, but this time around I'm going to let Daytona play a little bit more of a factor. The new rankings won't be based purely on the 500 final results but instead factor in all of a driver's Speedweeks performance, while also taking into account driver and team historical tendencies and results.
It'll take a few more weeks before we can really separate the haves from the have-nots.

Power Rankings after Daytona:
2010 NASCAR Feb. POWER RANKINGS
Current Driver Previous
1 Jimmie Johnson 1
As noted, he has tanked at Daytona the past three seasons and still went on to claim the championship, so there is no concern about the 48 team's ability to recover. He did win a Gatorade Duel and was competitive at times during the 500 until he was done in by a broken axle. In the past three years at California following the Daytona 500, he has finishes of third, second and ninth.
2 Kevin Harvick NR
Perhaps no driver was more impressive over the course of Speedweeks than Harvick, who was ever so close to sweeping the Bud Shootout (won), Duel (nipped at the line, finished second) and Daytona 500 (led race-high 41 laps, leader with two to go, finished seventh). But can Harvick and the team carry the performance to the intermediate tracks?
3 Kurt Busch 3
Looked to be one of the drivers to beat in the 500, leading 33 laps, but the pot-hole delays hurt him -- he said his car was set up for a race that would end under the sun. A late race call for tires also didn't help him like it did for others.
4 Clint Bowyer 5
A solid performer throughout Speedweeks with fourth-place finishes in his Duel as well as the Daytona 500, where he led 37 laps.
5 Tony Stewart 4
He was expected to be a contender in the Daytona 500 after finishing second in his Duel, but he was never close to being a factor Sunday.
6 Greg Biffle 11
The final results don't reflect how well he ran throughout Speedweeks. He led laps in the Bud Shootout but wrecked in the final laps to finish 15th. In his Duel, he led 16 laps, but finished 11th, choosing to play it safe rather take any risky actions. So come the 500, many were surprised to see him out front, but they probably shouldn't have been.
7 Jeff Gordon 2
He didn't have a great Speedweeks, but it wasn't as awful as his 26th-place finish in the Daytona 500 would indicate. He picked up finishes of sixth in the Bud Shootout and 10th in his Gatorade Duel and was in and around the top 10 during the 500 until a last-lap melee.
8 Jamie McMurray NR
His No. 1 Chevrolet was always up among the leaders in prelims to the 500 (Bud Shootout and Gatorade Duel), which I why I had pegged him as my sleeper pick for the Daytona 500. He led just four laps (two in the Bud Shootout and two in the 500) but left Daytona with finishes of third, sixth and, of course, first. Juan Pablo Montoya proved last year that Earnhardt-Ganassi can be a formidable team. McMurray may just surprise.
9 Carl Edwards 8
It was an up-and-down Speedweeks for Edwards, but with a baby on the way as soon as this week, he'll gladly leave Daytona with a ninth-place finish, his first top 10 in six Daytona 500 starts.
10 Kasey Kahne 14
With finishes of second in the Bud Shootout and first in his Gatorade Duel, I don't know that I had ever heard or seen him so happy entering the Daytona 500. Even though he paced the Daytona 500 field for just four laps, during the race he sounded confident that his car could get to the front. But then came the delay, and he didn't show as much muscle late before a late-race wreck relegated him to 30th.



NASCAR: Dale Jr. is Back! Is He??www.si.com
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. (AP) -- Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s charge to second place in the last two laps of the Daytona 500 was so frantic that even he couldn't quite remember how he pulled it off.
Earnhardt came out of nowhere to nearly steal a surprise victory at Daytona International Speedway on Sunday, somehow surging from 10th to second in a hard-driving finish during NASCAR's version of overtime. He couldn't quite run down Jamie McMurray as they raced to the finish line.
"It was all a blur," Earnhardt said. "I was just going wherever they weren't. I really don't enjoy being that aggressive. But if there was enough room for the radiator to fit, you just kind of held the gas down and prayed for the best."
Earnhardt, who hasn't won since June 2008 and missed the Chase last season, said the runner-up finish was awesome and frustrating, coming that close to another Daytona victory. The great run at the storied track isn't necessarily an indication that he'll be good at other NASCAR stops, either.
But it was a healthy shot of momentum for a driver facing intense pressure to perform for Hendrick Motorsports this season.
"I was happy," Earnhardt said. "I'm happy for the finish and it validates the changes they made and the hard work they've done over the offseason to get better."
Earnhardt won the Daytona 500 in 2004 and the July Daytona race in 2001, but had finished 27th or worse in four of his last six Sprint Cup races at the track where an accident claimed his father's life in 2001.
Earnhardt said he might have driven too conservatively at Daytona in recent years, and decided to let it all hang out this time around.
"I figured, 'What do I have to do to finish one of these things and finish it good?"' Earnhardt said. "I might have been a little too careful, you know?"
Earnhardt's dramatic charge came during NASCAR's second attempt at a "green-white-checker" finish, an overtime-like provision intended to make it less likely that races will end under caution. The rule was tweaked during Speedweeks to allow for up to three attempts at a green-flag finish -- instead of just one.
Earnhardt said he was in 22nd going into the final laps of regulation, but cautions caused NASCAR to add extra laps to the race and gave him the chance to charge forward.
Earnhardt praised NASCAR's new hands-off approach to governing driver behavior, saying it made him more comfortable making aggressive moves without fear of punishment.
"They made a lot of good choices on what to do to sort of put the racing back into the drivers' hands," Earnhardt said. "There was a ton of bumping out there. I never once felt like anybody was looking over my shoulder, you know. I mean, everybody took care of everybody as far as I know."
Still, Earnhardt said Sunday's strong finish didn't exactly dull the financial pain from Saturday's Nationwide race. Earnhardt flipped and completely tore up his car in a wreck, and teammate Danica Patrick heavily damaged her car when she got caught up in a crash. The Nationwide race was a rough day for JR Motorsports, the family race team that Earnhardt co-owns.
Earnhardt said Saturday the bill to replace his Nationwide car and repair Patrick's could total approximately $200,000. The total bill for bringing a pair of Nationwide cars to Daytona was even more.
"No, no, nothing will dull that -- unless someone has a $600,000 check they want to give me," Earnhardt said.
Sunday's third-place finisher, Greg Biffle, was sitting next to Earnhardt in the postrace news conference and apologized for hitting him in Saturday's accident. Earnhardt apparently hadn't realized who hit him.
"I was looking at your feet," Biffle joked.
Answered Earnhardt: "That was a mess."