Dale Earnhardt Jr., Justin Allgaier relish top-10 finish in JR. Motorsports' Cup debut

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Dale Earnhardt Jr. stretched out his hand to Justin Allgaier on pit road after Allgaier finished ninth in Sunday's Daytona 500 in the first race for Earnhardt as a Cup car owner.

"Good job," Earnhardt said as he slapped hands with Allgaier. "Just like we planned."

Earnhardt grinned and hugged Allgaier.

They laughed and joked some more before Earnhardt, looking first at the damaged No. 40 car Allgaier finished with, turned to his friend and said: "Hey, here we are. Proud of you."

Earnhardt hugged Allgaier again.

After an emotional week to make the Daytona 500 — JR. Motorsports doesn't have a charter and was not guaranteed a starting spot in the race — Earnhardt relished Allgaier's finish.

"Dale told me this week that nothing would be cooler than to be able to come down to pit road after the Daytona 500 and talk about how cool the race was," Allgaier said.

That's what they did. Allgaier got through the last-lap crash, gaining several spots to finish ninth.

"For not being in the Daytona 500 in 10 years, it was a pretty special night," Allgaier said while William Byron celebrated his second consecutive Daytona 500 win on the frontstretch.

When JR. Motorsports announced Jan. 15 that it would field a Cup car for the first time and do it at the Daytona 500, Earnhardt said he wanted to experience as much as he could this week. He was there when the garage opened at 6 a.m. ET Wednesday to watch his team unload the car from the hauler. Earnhardt walked next to the car as the team pushed it to its garage stall. He often was seen in that stall and around his car during the week.

But things didn't come easy for the team. Allgaier fell .08 seconds short of securing a spot in the Daytona 500 in Wednesday night's qualifying. Earnhardt admitted he was "heartbroken" by that result.

That meant he had to earn a spot in Thursday's qualifying races.

With four laps to go in his qualifying race, Allgaier was not in a position to claim a starting spot in the 500. He rallied to earn the spot in the sport's biggest race of the year. Earnhardt celebrated by running down part of pit road to get to Allgaier and congratulate him.

"Every day up until this morning was tough emotionally," Earnhardt told NBC Sports after Sunday night's race. "Today, I didn't have any nerves. Obviously at the end there, nervous about just getting through the wrecks. I didn't anticipate or expect a top-10 finish. So, I think we've been blessed.

"We were prepared and did everything we could to be right and when our opportunity come in the race to get what we could get, we got it. The day was nice. It was really low pressure. All the hard work and the emotion was the buildup. We got to the 1-yard line and punched it in to finish the day.

"We'll see what comes next. That's the next thing."

JR. Motorsports does not have any other Cup races planned at this point.

"I would love to do this," Earnhardt said of Cup racing. "It's where we belong. It's where want want to be. We just got to figure it out. We've just got to find the right people that want to partner with us to help us get into the Cup Series.

"We can't do it by ourselves. So, it's going to take some good people that want to invest in something that I believe has a lot of value and a lot of potential."