Daytona Earnhardt notes

DAYTONA 500 POST-RACE NOTES

DALE EARNHARDT (No. 3 GM Goodwrench Service Chevrolet) -- (On late-race accident.) We come up off of (turn) two and (Jeff) Gordon was making me tight. I caught a push and hit the wall. I checked off the throttle and somebody got into me from the back. It turned me sideways and I got over on my head (car flipped). (Did he have visions of accident last summer at Talladega, where his car flipped and was hit while sliding down the track?) Naw. All I knew while I was upside down was there weren't any big booms or hard crashes like last year.

"I got out of the car and walked around and looked at it. Man, I noticed all the wheels were still hooked on it. I told the guy in the car (wrecker attendant), 'fire it up.' When it fired right up I told him, 'get outta there -- I gotta go.' We wanted to get all the laps we could. We're thinking about that (NASCAR Winston Cup) championship. That was an awful good race car and we hated to wipe it out. But they'll build another one and we'll be back after it."