Jim Williams: Earnhardt boxed in at the Daytona 500

It’s a bittersweet week for Junior. This year’s race marks the 10th anniversary of the wreck that claimed the life of his father, racing icon Dale Earnhardt.

I spoke to Junior via conference call this week from Daytona about the race and the new two-car drafting, a practice of cars clustering together and touching — one behind the other — that is the talk of NASCAR.

Junior on the two-car draft » Everybody has an opinion, and I can sit up here and tell you everything that needs to be done, but it doesn’t really matter. NASCAR is going to make the changes they feel are necessary. The racing will be good regardless. The race was really interesting. It’s something new. We’ll have a good race regardless of what the package is. And the changes that NASCAR decides to make may change the racing just a little bit. But they’re smart enough to know we’re so far into the game right now for this particular event, there won’t be a big swing at it. But it’s probably something we need to look at doing down the road. I’m sure they will. They’ll probably get us all together here or Talladega, try all kinds of crazy ideas and see what works. And something will. There’s definitely a package out there that will give us exactly what we’re looking for.

Junior on getting off to a good start in 2011 » It’s a really good thing when you can come out of here — like last year we came out of here with a second-place finish. It does run you right into Phoenix with a good, confident feeling that you got a good start, you want to maintain, improve. So that’s kind of your attitude. Whereas, if you do have a bad finish in this race, you’re behind the eight ball, feeling more pressure, got to make big gains.

Examiner columnist Jim Williams is a seven-time Emmy Award-winning TV producer, director and writer. Check out his blog, Watch this!