DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- They never had a chance. Forty-two other drivers took the green flag yesterday in the Daytona 500 and not one of them was going to stop Dale Earnhardt Jr.

	Kelly Jordan, Associated Press Dale Earnhardt, Jr., No. 8 Chevy, celebrates with his crew at the start finish line after winning the Daytona 500 Sunday. Click photo for larger image. MORE DAYTONA 500 COVERAGE: Crash pins two-time winner Waltrip Daytona 500 Notebook: France still has an opinion

Not teammate Michael Waltrip, not qualifying race winner Elliott Sadler, not the ghosts and gremlins that prevented his father from winning this race for 20 years, not even President Bush and his motorcade. No one was going to prevent Earnhardt Jr. from winning only three years after his father, Dale Earnhardt, was killed on the final turn of this race.

After drafting behind Tony Stewart, sizing up his fellow Chevrolet driver, Earnhardt Jr. pulled to the bottom of the banking with 19 laps left and blew past Stewart, pinning him behind with deft maneuvers on the backstretch.

And then he counted down the laps at the 2.5-mile high-banked Daytona International Speedway until he raced under the checkered flag.

"It's the longest 15 laps," he said. "But we had an awesome car all week. We had been able to make passes like that in practice over and over, and I knew I was one of just a few cars, if not anybody else, that could make those types of moves, make those kinds of passes.

"I'm just real excited to have won this race. It's really hard to win it. Some of our greatest competitors come in and out of this sport without taking this trophy home. I'm glad I can say I've accomplished it and I can put the ongoing strive to win it behind me because we really wanted to win it so bad."

The victory is Earnhardt Jr.'s sixth since 2001 on a superspeedway, where restrictor plates limit horsepower to the engines. Together with teammate Michael Waltrip, who has won the Daytona 500 twice since 2001, Dale Earnhardt Inc. has combined to win 10 of the past 13 restrictor-plate races.

What makes his victory even more impressive is that he won it without any drafting help down the stretch. Waltrip's car had been knocked out after flipping down the backstretch in a horrific-looking 12-car crash on lap 71. He walked away after safety crews tried to cut open part of the car before eventually flipping it back over to free him, but the damage was done.

	THE 46TH DAYTONA 500: BY THE NUMBERS By The Numbers Dale Earnhardt Jr. edged Tony Stewart by 0.273 seconds to win his first Daytona 500 yesterday. Here are some other race facts. The race took 3 hours, 11 minutes 53 seconds to run. There were 26 lead changes among 10 drivers. There were four caution flags for 23 laps. Chevrolets dominated, taking five of the first six places. Fifteen drivers were on the same lap as Earnhardt Jr. when he took the checkered flag.

Several teams' strategies seemed to involve keeping Earnhardt Jr. and Waltrip apart so they could not draft away from the field. It failed. Earnhardt Jr.'s car was too strong, despite several rules changes this year that were expected to even the field and possibly give the other teams a chance to beat the DEI duo.

That wasn't the case. Trailing Earnhardt Jr. across the finish line was Stewart, rookie Scott Wimmer, Kevin Harvick and Jimmie Johnson.

"There wasn't going to be any stopping him," said Stewart, the 2002 series champion. "It was just a matter of time. When he decided he was ready to go, he went. I'm not ashamed at all.

"I tried everything I knew to do. There weren't enough cars behind us for me to get a good enough run. His car would really take off when he wanted to drop back and get a run on somebody. He could do that. If I tried to drop back, I couldn't do that."

Earnhardt Jr.'s victory was no doubt a popular one with the estimated crowd of more than 200,000. Since his father, a seven-time series champion, was killed, Earnhardt Jr. has been under pressure to follow in his tracks. They are now only the third father and son combination to win a Daytona 500, along with Lee and Richard Petty and Bobby and Davey Allison.

"Maybe all those things that happened to us in the past is what made us work harder, try to win this race more than any other. I'll be honest with you, this is more important to me than anything, any other race I run all year. I ain't ashamed to say that I put a lot of emphasis on coming down here and winning this race just because of what I've been through down here.

"You see dad run second, blow tires out, flip over on the back straightaway, this, that and the other year after year after year and there was not many things, if nothing at all, that ate that man's insides out. But losing this race over and over, you could see that on his face. That's one of the things I think anybody could tell bothered him.

"Inside of me, back then, just a little bit of wanting to win this race started up. You know, it's been building ever since. ... It's just the greatest day of my life."

It means no more Mondays of asking what could have been, something he had grown up around after watching his father try and fail to win this race so many times.

"God almighty, that was hard as hell," he said. "I mean, there were times he'd run out of the house screaming. There's times when you just didn't know what to do with yourself. We all wanted him to win it so bad, he lost it in the third turn with that flat tire [in 1990], that was probably the hardest one because he just dominated that race. He had a 22-second lead at one point. To see him get spun off out of turn two a couple of times, racing for second wasn't no fun, either."

Despite this victory, he realizes he has a long way to go before equaling some of his father's accomplishments.

"There's days when I feel like I'm as good as he was, but then you're reminded by something that reminds you of what he did that you will never be able to do. And that doesn't have to be a race he won.

"There's times on the racetrack where I get real confident and feel like I couldn't have done it better than that right there, but it ain't long before I figure I was wrong. I mean, he was pretty tough. Even if you thought you were better than him, he just had a way of proving you wrong at anything."

For his effort, Earnhardt Jr. collects nearly $1.5 million and is first in points in the newly sponsored NASCAR Nextel Cup Series. It is the first time he has led the standings of NASCAR's highest division.

Once again the Chevrolets were the class of the field on a superspeedway, where new rules created better racing. After an off-season that saw the two largest Ford teams combine engine programs, Robert Yates Racing's Elliott Sadler was expected to contend for the victory. But after starting on the front row, his handling was slightly off and prevented him from being a factor.

"At the end of the race was the best our car was, but those guys had gotten away from us by then," Sadler said. "I'm happy for [Earnhardt]. He deserves it. He's a heck of a race car driver -- probably the best there is right now in restrictor-plate racing. They won everything down here last year but the 500 and DEI is still the team to beat. We know that. We feel like we got closer to them this week but they're still very strong."