Jr. Achievement Wanted -- and Wanting

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla., Feb. 13 -- As prologues go, last weekend's Bud Shootout couldn't have unfolded more perfectly for Dale Earnhardt Jr.

In the waning moments of the 70-lap race, he got a strategic shove to the front from superstar stablemate Jimmie Johnson, who just as easily could have resented Earnhardt's offseason addition to stock-car racing's most elite team. With the victory, Earnhardt ended a 21-month winless streak. And he was rewarded with a bearhug by car owner Rick Hendrick, who celebrated as if it were Hendrick Motorsports' first victory instead of its 200th-plus.

But by Wednesday, that triumph was little more than a footnote to preparations for Sunday's Daytona 500. The Shootout doesn't count toward NASCAR's season-long championship, for one. It's scripted for sheer entertainment to whet fans' appetite for stock-car racing's Super Bowl. Moreover, Earnhardt's Chevrolet engine developed a glitch during Wednesday's final practice -- a problem that afflicted nine other drivers and will force everyone who changed engines (Earnhardt included) to the rear of the field for the start of Thursday's 150-mile qualifying races.

Despite last weekend's feel-good story, it won't be clear for some time whether NASCAR's most ballyhooed union -- Earnhardt and Hendrick Motorsports -- will produce the slew of victories that so many fans feel the sport's most popular driver deserves.

Until then, every move Earnhardt makes in his new No. 88 Chevy, as well as every hiccup in his engine, will dominate the sport's headlines.

There's a tremendous amount riding on Earnhardt's decision to part ways with the team founded by his late father, the seven-time champion who was killed on the last lap of the 2001 Daytona 500, and join the most successful, well-funded team in stock-car racing.

NASCAR's slide in TV ratings has coincided with Earnhardt's nearly two-year absence from Victory Lane, and few think it's coincidental.

"Junior has had two mediocre years back to back," NASCAR team owner Felix Sabates noted. "If Dale Junior does have a good year, you'll have a lot of fans come back to the sport because he's doing well."

Earnhardt doesn't give himself that much credit.

"The sport don't ride on my shoulders," he said after his victory in the Shootout. "If we weren't here tomorrow, there's guys in this sport that would carry the sport to wherever it goes, and it would continue to do great things."

But he knows his own future likely rides on his decision to leave the cocoon of the family team, even if family dynamics were less than ideal.

Until last week, the 33-year-old driver had never competed for a car owner he wasn't related to.