Dale Jr. more confident; snipe hunting at Daytona

An interesting day at Daytona on Saturday. NASCAR Chairman Brian France showed as much emotion as we've ever seen from him as he defended the Substance Abuse Policy. Dale Earnhardt Jr. talked about his season and how he's doing with a new crew chief. And the search for Jeremy Mayfield at Daytona, i.e. the great snipe hunt.

First to France. He vigorously defended the Substance Abuse Policy in light of the federal judge granting Jeremy Mayfield an injunction to again be able to drive in the Cup series for the first time since he was indefinitely suspended May 9 for a failed drug test. To see what France said, just go to the next entry in the blog. I posted the transcript.

As for Mayfield, we in the media have been searching for him the past two days at Daytona. He was here on Thursday. Then came the rumor he was going to be at the track Friday. Today, there was talk that he had picked up his credential and was in the Nationwide garage. After a lot of time searching by many of us, he wasn't found. Supposedly he may be at the track Saturday. The search will continue.

On to Dale Jr. He talked about his season. Here's what he said:

"I've been more comfortable in the car. I've liked what I've felt from the race cars over the last couple of weeks. Lance (McGrew, crew chief) and I seem to communicate well. He's very excited and we are able to kind of root each other on throughout the race it seems. 

"Once we get back to where we want to be, we'll appreciate that much more than we probably did in the past because with how competitive the COT has made this sport, if you fall behind a little bit, it takes more to get back than it used to. You used to be able to rebound in a week or two. But if you get behind in this sport now, there is a chance you may not recover for some time. So it definitely has been a trying time and it was really hard and our team was really, really low. But just knowing where we were and how I felt two months ago to now, I can definitely say it's a big difference for us. And there's no one person or one thing that really deserves the credit. We just made a couple of changes and everything seems to be moving in the right direction. So, we'll just keep it  up.''

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