Earnhardt Jr. Quotes on FOX Sports 1

He's a hero

Daytona 500 winner Dale Earnhardt Jr. appeared on FOX Sports 1's FOX SPORTS LIVE Sunday evening and on NASCAR RACE HUB on Monday afternoon. Following are excerpts from his interviews:

Daytona 500 winner Dale Earnhardt Jr. on FOX SPORTS LIVE

"What makes this win so special is the people I am doing it with. My family is here, my sister, my whole group at JR Motorsports — all our staff, my girlfriend, Amy, and my team. All these people that I work with … Steve (Letarte) puts so many good people around me and we all really enjoy working together. At the end of last season, we all said it was probably the most fun any of us had had in the sport. A lot of these guys have been in the sport forever … it meant a lot to me that they were enjoying themselves. When you win, it's awesome, but when you win with people you love and you enjoy working with and you love spending time with, it just means so much more."

Daytona 500 winner Dale Earnhardt Jr. on NASCAR RACE HUB

On late-race strategy:

"The strategy was just to get in front of the lane that was moving, and that typically was the top lane on the straightaway and the bottom lane in the corners. I would just try to keep those guys pushing me. Whoever was closest to my car, I needed to be in front of them, so they were shoving me along and keeping the speed up in my car so I could stay ahead of the draft. Sometimes, you didn't always choose that lane correctly and you had to fend off somebody on the inside and maybe even lose the lead like we did a time or two with (Greg) Biffle and Carl Edwards, but our car was so strong, we could usually seize that position back rather quickly."

On the tape on the grille for last few laps:

"We did think about it. My crew chief, Steve Letarte, told me about the piece of debris. It was a piece of Bear Bond that's very adhesive and wasn't going to come off the car, but we didn't know that at the time. I got up behind the pace car and tried to move around to get it off the grille; turned the engine fan off to change the pressure in the duct work there to try to get it off.

But, I think that whole process — for a moment — distracted us enough to not psych ourselves out or over-think what we were going to do. Something about that little piece of debris distracting us long enough really occupied us enough so we weren't overwhelmed or overcome by the situation. To be honest, with two laps to go, I had been cycling the motor to save fuel, so the water temperature was down to 150 degrees … we weren't going to run hot. They could have taped the grille off solid and it would have been fine with me because anytime you close the grille up, the car is going to run a little faster, especially at Daytona. So, I think it helped our car if anything, but we weren't worried about it running hot."

On late-race nerves:

"Anytime you take the lead in any particular race, you start daydreaming about winning that race and you get caught up in that emotion and want to go to Victory Lane and enjoy that with your team, especially at the Daytona 500. You daydream about it all week long while you are down there. You can't help it. So, when you're getting closer and closer to the end, you start to realize that you have every opportunity to win the race … you have plenty of race car. It comes down to making the right choices and the onus and the pressure begins to build on you … you have all the tools to get it done and you just hope it's going to work out over those final laps, and it did."