Where else do you go and barely make the field and cry tears of joy?” The answer is Daytona, the place that means so much to the Earnhardt family.

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,

Dale Earnhardt Jr. blinked back tears as the moment socked him at Daytona International Speedway — a track bursting with triumph and tragedy for his family — that he was, with a country star and a NASCAR champ in tow,