With the Pepsi 400 over and the series moving to Chicago, here are a few tidbits left from an interesting Saturday night:

Doing the right thing
Much has been written about Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s bid to win his second consecutive 400, a high-rolling, go-for-broke move that resulted in him dropping from second to sixth and losing 20 championship points in the process.

Big Deal.

In his third Winston Cup season, Little E has about as much a chance of winning this year's title as, well, a race running caution-free at Daytona apparently. The Bud driver's not mathematically eliminated, but it would take the comeback of all comebacks to bring home the hardware in 2002.

He trails Sterling Marlin by 487 points and would have to trim 26 points off the Coors Light driver's lead every week to pass him. Then he would have to deal with the other 41 cars, so the stars would pretty much have to be aligned and Junior would have to get every break, because five drivers are within 200 points of Marlin.

Junior was 16th entering the 400, and as bad as his season has been, finishing second may have been no different than finishing 10th. In fact, a runner-up showing would probably be worse because the No.8 was so close to winning.

Junior's mistake on Saturday night was choosing to pass on a difficult part of the track where no one had passed all night -- the high side -- rather than trying to sweep beneath Michael Waltrip's Chevy. But choosing to pass -- especially at this point in his season -- was the right thing to do.

Mob mentality
Last year Cleveland Browns' fans threw trash at officials after reversing a game-deciding call in an NFL game. This past Tuesday fans at Miller Park in Milwaukee booed commissioner Bud Selig's decision to end the Major League Baseball All-Star Game in a tie.

Somewhere in between those two fan reactions lie the folks on the backstretch at Daytona, who expressed their displeasure by turning the Superstretch into their own personal waste area and a late-night buffet for the local seagulls. Some drivers were upset, while a few treated it sarcastically.

Wood Brothers driver Elliott Sadler came to the fans' defense this week -- somewhat.

''If race fans weren't that enthusiastic about racing, racing probably wouldn't be where it is today. Not that I agree with them throwing things on the track, but I'm glad to see fans really into the sport instead of just going, 'OK, well maybe next time they'll red-flag it.'''

Weather watch
Not trying to be the staff meteorologist here, but NASCAR really needs to do something about the weather at Daytona. You might be wondering: How can NASCAR control the weather? Well it can't, of course. But it can keep from pigeonholing qualifying by creating a larger window of opportunity and increasing the chances of actually doing it Thursday afternoon rather than that night, even though the race takes place in the evening.

Qualifying at Daytona is already unique. No other race qualifies like the Daytona 500, and with the constant summer rain in Florida, there's a very good chance qualifying for the 400 will be pushed back to the next day or canceled altogether. So why not just do it in the day anyway? There's no use in dragging everyone back to the track at 10 the next morning on a quiet day when nothing's going on. Plus, where a driver starts at Daytona and Talladega has very little bearing on where he finishes -- seven of the top-10 finishers last Saturday started outside the top 15.

Bill Whitehead covers auto racing for the Stuart (Fla.), on the Web at http:www.tcpalm.com.