The best story from testing at Daytona involves a beard and a bet.
Matt Kenseth was among the invited guests for a New Year's Eve '70s party at Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s house. In the heat of the festive moment, Junior bet Kenseth he couldn't keep a beard he had grown — a Fu Manchu thing, in honor of the party — when everybody reconvened at Daytona for testing.
Game on, Kenseth said.
The boys bet $2,500.
Only Kenseth came to Daytona with a lame three-day stubble and tried to pass that off as a "beard."
"Pay up," Junior said.
"It looked really stupid, but I hate losing any money and he kept upping the money and upping the money, so finally I said OK, but I checked first to make sure I didn't have any photos or anything," Kenseth said. "And then I got a call, oh, yeah, Monday. 'By the way, you've got to do a photo here and you've got to do this interview and do a photo shoot there.' So anyway, I guess I lost. Although this technically should count. It's three days old, two days."
Um, not really, Earnhardt said.
"Y'all can remind him that he owes me $2,500 because he had a beard that night and I bet him he couldn't keep it through the test, and we actually sent a few texts back and forth to confirm the bet, and he shaved his beard," he said. "I told him to go to the bank, but maybe he forgot. I want my $2,500."
At last check, Kenseth had vowed to pay up. And Earnhardt was going to use the money to take his team to dinner.