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TONY STEWART and his evil cackle will fill victory lane

If the Daytona 500 is the biggest race of the season--the NASCAR Super Bowl, the Great American Race, a spectacle unlike any other spectacle--then why was Tony Stewart a no-show for testing? I'll tell you why. He's pure evil--an evil genius if you will--and it's all part of his diabolical scheme to rule the world. Or at the very least, to win the 500.

Wicked one that he is, Stewart stayed away from Daytona in January while others flocked in masses to the house that Big Bill France built. His No. 20 Chevy was there all right, but someone named Mike or Buddy or Steve was driving it. Stewart was nowhere to be found.

The reaction was typical in racing circles--just another example of the self-centered jerk putting himself above his team. Nothing could be further from the truth. It was a brilliant stroke of strategy.

Stewart, in an interview posted on the team's website, said what so many drivers who trekked to Daytona and stood around with their hands in their pockets for three days were thinking: "Daytona testing is kind of like watching paint dry."

So he took a few vacation days instead.

Good for him. He'll be rested, and he'll win.

Stewart led the most laps in the 500 last year and finished in the top five in both Daytona races, so he knows how to get around the track. All he needed was an evil plan.

Best car plus best driver equals two straight for DALE EARNHARDT JR.

All you teary-eyed No. 8 fans can come in off the ledge. A revamped team doesn't mean Earnhardt's season is over before it starts. The departure of all of Earnhardt's cousins and uncles and arrival of Pete Rondeau as crew chief won't be followed by the Four Horsemen. Even if they were to show up, Junior'd outrun 'em.

And he'd do it all by his lonesome. From preseason speculation, you'd think Rondeau doesn't know power steering fluid from wiper fluid. Who knows, maybe Rondeau will turn out to be as sharp as a ball bearing. But at Daytona, it won't matter. At Daytona, you, dear reader, could sit atop the pit box and guide Earnhardt to victory lane. Pit calls at Daytona are simple: Junior, go that way, really fast. When you're almost out of gas, come get more. Be in front at the very end.

Anyway, Earnhardt will win the Daytona 500 because Dale Earnhardt Inc. builds the best restrictor-plate cars in NASCAR and he drives brilliantly at plate tracks.

His victory in the most recent plate race is a sterling example. He drove with steel fists in velvet driving gloves, cramming his bad self through openings most drivers wouldn't have realized were openings. That convergence of guts, talent and speed was doomed to footnotedness when he said, on live TV, that the win didn't mean #@%!. Maybe it didn't. But when Earnhardt wins his second straight 500, it certainly will.

COPYRIGHT 2005 Sporting News Publishing Co.
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