Dale Earnhardt Jr. felt he had one of the Daytona 500's fastest cars, felt he should have won the race.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. felt he had one of the Daytona 500's fastest cars, felt he should have won the race.

But fast cars have to be put in the right positions over the course of a 500-mile race to get a win and Junior's inability to repeat as Daytona 500 champion can be directly attributed to a bad move he made with 19 laps to go.

Earnhardt restarted in third, but as the pack slowly got up to speed on the first green flag lap, he found himself without drafting partners.

What the heck happened?

"Jimmie [Johnson] was on my quarter panel," Earnhardt said. "He was in a great spot on the guy in front of me. And I thought if I could get in behind him he was going to shoot past to the lead. I could tuck in on the quarter panel a little bit as soon as I got on that right rear quarterpanel."

However, the thoughts of sidedrafting and working with his Hendrick Motorsports teammate were tempered by a reality that the cars on the outside line were closer to Junior than he realized.

"I didn't think they were that close on the outside line," Junior said. "I thought we had a couple car lengths on the outside line but they were right there.

"You know, just one of them moves. You make some good ones, you make some bad ones, I made a bad one late."

Junior finally slotted into line in 15th position and when the green flag flew for a green-white-checker restart with two laps to go, Junior started in eighth. He made a charge to the front to challenge eventual winner Joey Logano, but he had too much ground to make up in too little time. And again, that was his own doing.

"[Expletive], I didn't have nothing going on," he cracked.

Here's where we can go back to the good move/bad move principle. And we'll also make it clear that with eight restrictor plate wins, Junior's good moves overshadow the bad ones.

The low line on the last restart wasn't very organized. Logano, leading the race, got a push from Clint Bowyer, who was being shoved by Kevin Harvick, who had Junior on his bumper. By the time Junior was at the same spot on the track where he started to slide through the field 17 laps prior, he was in third place.

He was still in third behind Logano and Harvick when the caution came out on the last lap. Did he have an opportunity to make a move for the win? Earnhardt isn't so sure and said he wasn't in a good position to think about winning.

"Once we got clear, we sort of strung out," he said. "Just not enough laps to form anything. I think even if Kevin backed up, I don't know whether I would have stayed with him or whether Denny [Hamlin] would have stayed with me. You never know what decision you would have made."

Had he won, Earnhardt would have been the first driver since Sterling Marlin to win consecutive Daytona 500s. Because of the win-and-in nature of NASCAR's new Chase format, Junior's referenced many times of his team's ability in 2014 to be aggressive knowing that a Chase spot was waiting for them in the fall.

While the first-week virtual Chase guarantee is in Logano's hands this year, Earnhardt tried to look on the bright side of finishing third.

"You don't imagine the 16 guys are going to win races and you want to try to put points together in case you need to lean on that, fall back on that to make the Chase," Junior said. "But there's no guarantees.

"You like to take good cars like we had today and win with them when you get a chance."