Dale Earnhardt Jr. wins big race, punches people on shoulder

A news release from Daytona says Dale Earnhardt Jr. “is ready to tell the world the story” about how he won the Daytona 500 for the second time on Sunday.

I don’t know about that. It’s more like NASCAR is asking him to tell the world about it. Not that he is complaining too much.

The news release said Earnhardt Jr. had gotten one hour of sleep after holding off the field and completing a race that was delayed 6½ hours by rain.

By the time he finished taking pictures and doing interviews it was 3 a.m. His socks were almost dry.

“The team was having most of the fun,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “When I got over there, they were out of spirits. So we found some more, and we just sat around and talked about how cool it was – just punching each other in the shoulder until about 4 a.m., and then I had to hang it up.”

Out of spirits? Punching each other in the shoulder? Wally Cleaver and Lumpy Rutherford used to punch each other on the shoulder.

I think this is why a lot of people would still like Dale Jr., even if he had a different surname and didn’t do those Wrangler commercials.

Tonight, Earnhardt Jr. will appear on the Letterman show. It would be cool if he and the host punched each other on the shoulder.

It also would be cool if Darrell Waltrip would quit calling Earnhardt Jr. “Junebug” on TV.