DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- Your boy Junior won again, and all is right with the world.

Racing got another day in the sun with Dale Earnhardt Jr. in Victory Lane and another news cycle with the guy they're calling "the man in green.'' Well, a few people are calling him that. It really hasn't caught on yet. With a new team and new colors and a new number, Junior's win was welcome assurance to what seems like every person down here. The roar that went up when he took the lead on lap 18 of the first of the Gatorade Duels brought goose bumps up on your arms.

He's now in line to become the only driver in history to sweep the Shootout, the Duel and the Daytona 500.

Bill Elliott watched the various celebrations behind the wall of Daytona International Speedway and realized for the first time that the sport might've just passed him by. Elliott will miss the Daytona 500, marking the first time since 1962 that the Wood Brothers race team will not be in the biggest race of the year.

As the most popular driver of his age basked in the adulation of a nation of fans, Elliott, the most popular driver of his age, shut the motor off of the No. 21 Ford, took off his helmet and ran his hands through his red hair.

"I don't think there are words that can describe it, but that's life,'' he said. "There will be days like this.''

There used to be days like this all the time back when the Twins were among the best races of the season. There was a time when the qualifying races actually counted as victories. There was a time when the order of finish Thursday could determine an entire season.

Now they race for two openings in each event. Now they race 150 miles instead of 125, or 100 as it was in the early days, and the entire field is basically set before the races even begin. What seems to be a done deal Thursday seems to foreshadow a done deal Sunday.

Junior wouldn't dare go quite that far.

"Dare?'' he asked, tempting fate. "Hmph, that's funny. I feel like we got a shot, know what I mean? Nobody's boastful enough, I don't think, personality wise, to come in here and claim that. I wouldn't expect anybody to do that.''

There was a time when people did make boastful claims, but they were never much of a threat after they did. David Pearson never felt like that, and it took him a long time to ever win one, and then when he did he never won the 500 again. Junior's dad lost the 500 every way possible before finally winning his only 500 in 1998.

Earnhardt walked through the garage area before the first of the two qualifying races, and a multitude of people followed his every step. He was surrounded as he made it to his green and white No. 88 Chevy on the starting grid, and more than 100,000 people watched Junior's every move from the grandstands.

Almost no one watched Elliott has he got out of the 21 after the first of the two races.

"I'm bummed out,'' he said.

The famous Wood Brothers car was loaded up and carted away, and Elliott, a two-time winner of the Daytona 500, just shook his head and walked off. Junior said he never had a car like the one Elliott used to bring here back in the 80s, a car that everybody knew was the fastest, the car no one could pass no matter how hard they tried.

"Yeah, I don't think I've ever had that car down here,'' he said.

It sure looked like it Thursday. He'd swept to the Shootout win Saturday night, and he arrived here looking like a favorite in every way. A huge cheer went up from the stands when he first walked onto pit road and a gallery of photographers began shooting pictures of every move he made.

He made several moves during the race, but the one on lap 18 brought a thundering roar from the frontstretch crowd. Above the remarkable noise of a field of 27 cars screaming down the backstretch, the entire crowd rose as one and pointed to the cars as they entered the third turn. Junior was going to the front, and you could feel the entire sport pause and then explode in even more noise.

When a NASCAR crowd drowns out the decibel level of a race, well, it's only happened a few times and it almost always involved Junior's dad.

You remembered back to those days and days like them when the King would go high and pass the 21 for the lead or when Elliott himself would rim-ride off one of the corners and cut through the unique Daytona noise and take everything, the noise, the race and the sport itself to a level that seemed implausible.

Junior won Thursday, and a capacity crowd stood as one wearing various shades of old red and new green, some sporting old "8'' tattoos and new "88'' tattoos, and they pointed the way race fans have always pointed when something happens on the big tracks, the way they would point at Pearson when he would come back around the King, or at Elliott, when he would drive his Ford here so fast it seemed the race would go by in a flash.

Nothing lasts forever, Elliott said Thursday. It felt like the beginning and the end of something big.