Daytona 500

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- Jeff Gordon makes his own decisions now, but it was his stepfather, John Bickford, who molded the child into the man he is today.Both admit it came with a price."I took Jeff's whole childhood away from him," said Bickford, 52. "I didn't want his buddies with us when he was 13 and 14, I didn't want the peer pressure or the distractions."Bickford had a single focus: to mold his stepson into a successful race car driver. It worked, as Gordon yesterday was to began qualifying for next Sunday's Daytona 500."

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. - Seven-time Winston Cup champion Dale Earnhardt was killed yesterday on the last lap of the Daytona 500. Earnhardt, 49, was right where he wanted to be. He was running third, and the two cars in front of him were cars he owned. His friend Michael Waltrip was leading and his son, Dale Jr., was second. And there was Earnhardt plotting how he could either keep someone else from passing them or get past them himself on a final intimidating dash to the finish. Coming out of the third turn, Earnhardt, who had been running low, was maintaining his line, as Kenny Schrader took his Pontiac high to Earnhardt's outside and Sterling Marlin moved his Dodge low. As the three cars began entering the fourth turn, Marlin's front bumper touched Earnhardt's rear bumper just enough to make him loose, and the back end of the Chevrolet began to wiggle.

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. - Oh, how the headphones crackled last season, with Dale Earnhardt Jr. and his uncle and crew chief, Tony Eury, telling each other what they thought during races. And how the volume rose in the garage when Earnhardt and his cousin, Tony Eury Jr., argued over the car's setup. That's how it is with families. Tempers flare. Voices rise. But does anyone listen? Does anyone learn anything? Is there respect? During the offseason, a series of meetings led to a swap of teams.

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- Jeff Gordon looks sleek in his black-and-white driving suit designed to match the millennium silver paint scheme on his Chevrolet for Sunday's Daytona 500. "The car is racy and I'm racy," Gordon said. "The team is pumped up and ready to go." A year after making his startling, three-abreast move into turn one to set up the pass that would lead him to victory in the 1999 Daytona 500, Gordon does, indeed, seem ready to go at it again. "I never want to have to make a move like that to win a race," he said.

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- Winston Cup champion Dale Jarrett had been saying all week that to win a race, a driver no longer can wait until the last lap to make his move. Yesterday, in the 42nd Daytona 500, Jarrett proved his point and came home the winner for the third time in his expanding career. On a restart at the beginning of Lap 197, Johnny Benson's Pontiac was in the lead. He brought the field down slowly, trying to dull Jarrett's attack, but going through the second turn, Jarrett faked high.

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. - The laps remaining had dwindled to three when car owner Rick Hendrick came on driver Jeff Gordon's radio. "It's time to go," Hendrick said to his driver, whose No. 24 Chevrolet was running second to Dale Earnhardt Jr. and his No. 8 Chevrolet. "Yes, sir, it is," said Gordon, who turned up the jets and won the Daytona 500 yesterday for the third time and for the first time since 1999. The victory, which came in the first overtime race here, enabled Gordon to join Dale Jarrett and Bobby Allison as three-time winners of the event.

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- Dale Earnhardt is the Man in Black, The Intimidator. He is NASCAR's six-time champion.In a sport where death can be the price paid for participation, men like Earnhardt often seem bigger than life.And here at Daytona International Speedway, where Earnhardt will contend again for his first Daytona 500 victory today, he has worked hard at living up to the image.Publicly, the champion smiles, signs autographs, shakes hands and seems to get a genuine kick out of everything from installing a seat in his IROC car to winning Thursday's 125-mile qualifying race.

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- Run silent, run fast. Several Nextel Cup drivers will start today's Daytona 500 atop a wave of hype or under a cloud of controversy, but there's another group lurking quietly beyond the headlines with fast stock cars that could find Victory Lane. Daytona 500 Daytona International Speedway, Daytona Beach, Fla., today, 2 p.m., chs. 45, 5

The Great American Race is tomorrow, and for the 50th running of the Daytona 500, the son of one of the sport's dominant figures is a favorite. Dale Earnhardt Jr., driving for a new team with a new number, has already won two Speedweeks races leading up the main event, and the No. 88 bandwagon is filling up fast. Tomorrow also marks the 10th anniversary of the elder Dale Earnhardt's single Daytona 500 victory and the seventh year since his death at Daytona. So root for whichever driver captures your fancy, whether it's Junior or his teammate, Jimmie Johnson, or Jeff Gordon or Tony Stewart or some other speed demon.

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. - Dale Jarrett blasted back from the past yesterday. And Jimmie Johnson just kept on blazing. Jarrett won the pole for Sunday's Daytona 500 with a qualifying lap at 188.312 mph in a Ford, and Johnson locked up the other front-row starting spot with the second-best speed, 188.170 in a Chevrolet. Only the front-row starters locked in starting spots for the race but, under NASCAR's new qualifying rules, the top 35 teams in car owner points are guaranteed starting positions.