ADVANTAGE, HENDRICK MOTORSPORTS; With Jeff Gordon's win at Daytona, DEI's dominance in plate-races appears to be over.(Motorsports)

Byline: AL PEARCE

For the last 15 races spanning four-plus seasons, Dale Earnhardt Inc. has ruled the black art of NASCAR restrictor-plate racing. In each of those races-starting at the 2001 Daytona 500-at least one DEI-prepared Chevrolet Monte Carlo has finished in the top-10 at Daytona International Speedway and Talladega Superspeedway.

The organization's "plate resume'' is truly impressive: 10 victories, five seconds, a third, a fifth, a sixth, a seventh and two eights among Dale Earnhardt Jr., Michael Waltrip and (to a much lesser extent) ex-teammate Steve Park. DEI has two 1-2 finishes at both Daytona Beach and Talladega, and a 1-6-8 at Talladega. Indeed, DEI's plate-race dominance is as predictable as death, taxes and political shenanigans; count yourself fortunate to have pulled car No. 8 or 15 in the office pool on a plate-race weekend.

But could DEI be losing some of its advantage to the Hendrick Motorsports teams? Granted, Earnhardt Jr. won this year's Daytona 500, but Hendrick drivers Jimmie Johnson and Jeff Gordon finished fifth and eighth. Gordon beat Junior in April's race at Talladega, where Johnson was fourth and Waltrip 15th. The gap narrowed considerably in the Pepsi 400 at Daytona Beach, where Gordon and Johnson finished 1-2 ahead of Junior. Hendrick drivers Terry Labonte and Brian Vickers were eighth and ninth, and Waltrip 13th after fading late.

Talladega and the 400 marked the first time since 2001 DEI has lost two consecutive plate races. During one stretch the company had five consecutive plate victories, eight of 10 and 10 of 13. Sore losers and conspiracy theorists carped that DEI was cheating, that it had some secret engine combination or tricked-up bodies that inspectors willingly overlooked. And, of course, everyone knew Junior and Mikey were getting special plates with obscenely large holes. (FYI: Nobody's ever proved anything of the sort, so get over it.)

In Daytona Beach, his team's 1-2-8-9 finish moved owner Rick Hendrick to say what he said he shouldn't say. "I don't want to brag,'' Hendrick said, "but, yeah, I think we've got the best restrictor-plate program in NASCAR right now. I think maybe DEI caused all of us to step up our restrictor-plate program. We've worked unbelievably hard, and tonight proved how far we've come.''

Gordon started from the pole and led five times for 61 of the 160 laps. He led in clumps of nine, 11, nine and 25 laps before passing Tony Stewart and leading the final seven. Except for pit stop cycles, points-leader Johnson wasn't worse than seventh after coming from 19th on the grid. Junior led four times for 23 laps, all but five of them during the midpoint of the race. Kurt Busch finished fourth and Stewart fifth. Waltrip led 57 laps and was a serious contender until fading badly down the stretch with handling problems.