DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Josh Berry heard the rumblings earlier this week — that his former team owner and one of the sport’s biggest stars, Dale Earnhardt Jr., would be at the racetrack super early.

“I still have several friends over at JR Motorsports,” Berry said. “And they kinda said, ‘Yeah, Dale is gonna be there at 6 a.m., when the hauler unloads.’ ”

Berry said he initially responded with a laugh. That is, until the driver of the No. 21 Cup car — and protege of Earnhardt Jr. — realized his friends were serious.

“But he did it, I saw it,” Berry said with a smile. “So it’s really cool. I know they’re excited. And hopefully they have a good weekend.”

Earnhardt Jr. is not new to the Daytona 500 spotlight. The 15-time most popular driver and NASCAR Hall of Famer and son of Dale Earnhardt Sr. won two Daytona 500 championships in his decades-long career in the Cup Series. It’s hard to imagine that there is anything new to him about Daytona International Speedway — that there is anything that could get him to wake up at the crack of dawn and head to NASCAR’s most vaunted venue five days before race day.

And yet, on Wednesday, there he was, at the Daytona infield at 6 a.m., walking with his hauler that contained his team’s Cup car entry, visibly excited.

Excited like he’s experiencing something new.

Because he is.

This year’s running of the Daytona 500 (2:30 p.m. Sunday, Fox) will be the first time JR Motorsports — the race team owned and operated by Earnhardt Jr. and his CEO sister, Kelley — competes in a NASCAR Cup Series race. JRM has long been one of the best Xfinity Series and Truck Series teams in the sport, but the team hasn’t yet run at the Cup level. Justin Allgaier, last year’s Xfinity Series champion and a JRM fixture at this point, will drive the No. 40 car. He’ll be one of a handful of cars vying to qualify for one of the race’s two remaining open slots; his last chance to do so will be during Thursday’s Duel races.

This Cup opportunity came about as singer Chris Stapleton wanted to sponsor a Daytona 500 car to promote his Traveller Whiskey. Acquiring a charter and securing sponsorship for a Cup program were always the barriers to the venture. Earnhardt Jr. told reporters at the time of the announcement that there was “no conversation or plan beyond the Daytona race.” But, the 2004 and 2014 Daytona 500 champion added: “We have been open to opportunity and possibility.”

Whether it turns out being a one-off event — or if it turns into something more — it’s clear that drivers across the sport are excited seeing the name Earnhardt back in the Cup Series.

“To have a guy like him involved in any capacity, I think, is a good thing,” Chase Elliott, the current most popular driver who in his earlier NASCAR days ran with JR Motorsports. “He’s passionate about it. He’s been very vocal about how much it means to him to field a Cup car, especially here at the Daytona 500. So I just think it’s healthy. It’s good. And I’m glad that the system isn’t so complicated, or has gotten so outrageously expensive, that that couldn’t happen. Because it almost kind of felt that way for a little while. . ... So I’m just glad that it makes sense. That he can come in, field a car and have fun with it and live a dream that he’s had.”

Justin Allgaier says Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s presence is amazing for NASCAR

Take the opinion of the driver himself — Allgaier.

Allgaier has been with JR Motorsports since 2016, about a decade after the race team in its full form took shape. In those nine years, it’s funded many of the Cup Series’ top guys — Alex Bowman, Elliott, William Byron, Tyler Reddick, Noah Gragson and others — and has won championships and dominated other national series.

But never has it fielded a Cup entry.

Until this weekend.

Which is something that has Earnhardt Jr., the team — and the sport — giddy with excitement.

“I think it put a lot of things in perspective for me this morning: Watching his excitement, watching him being in the garage, watching him kind of overseeing all of this,” Allgaier said. “The amount of effort and time that he’s put in this program, understanding the car, what it needs to do to be fast, checking in on the progress daily. … Those are big steps for our race team. But I also think it’s equally a great thing for our sport.

“Dale Jr. is an icon of the sport. He’s somebody who has amassed a fan base that goes well beyond the walls of the racetrack. And he’s done it because he’s Dale. His persona, and who he is, that’s Dale. And we all know Dale Jr. He’s the same outside the car as he was inside the car, and he’s accomplished a lot of great things on the racetrack. But as a sport, to see Dale’s excitement for this, it makes me excited for it, whether I’m involved in it or not.”

Allgaier added that Earnhardt Jr.’s presence has “bled through the garage.”

“A lot of employees from other race teams, even drivers who have texted myself or Dale personally, they’ve been super pumped on this,” he said. “That says a lot in my mind about what this truly means, and how special this truly is.”

So no pressure on qualifying for the big race Sunday, huh, Tyler?

“I have seen a lot of social media,” Allgaier said. “I’m pretty confident that I need to never show my face again if we don’t make the field. So I will do my best job that I possibly can.

“But I think that this exercise of getting here has been significant for what it takes: the time, the energy, the financial side of it. Whether this is the first and only or first of many, I couldn’t tell you. But five years ago, I would’ve said this day would’ve never come. And it finally came, and it’s everything I thought it would be and then some.”

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