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Dale Earnhardt Jr. might have said it best after his pole-winning lap during Sunday’s qualifying, when asked if he could win the 2011 Daytona 500: “About 30 of us can.”
A Ford driver would be a pretty neat story. Its next win would be No. 600 all-time. The company’s first came in 1950, at Dayton (Ohio) Speedway, with Jimmy Florian driving. Its last came in the 2010 season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway, with driver Carl Edwards.
Need some more possibilities? How about anyone with an Earnhardt-Childress Racing engine under the hood? ECR engines swept the restrictor plate races last season. Jamie McMurray and Kevin Harvick won the two Daytona races; Harvick and Clint Bowyer won the Talladega races.
The pre-race Driver Rating is usually a strong indicator for success. The top five in that statistic: Tony Stewart (100.7), Kyle Busch (99.0), Kurt Busch (94.8), Jeff Gordon (92.8) and Jimmie Johnson (91.7).
Speaking of Kurt Busch, he would join an impressive list of drivers to have won both the Budweiser Shootout and the Daytona 500 in the same season: Bobby Allison (1982), Bill Elliott (1987), Dale Jarrett (1996), Jeff Gordon (1997) and Jarrett again (2000).
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