DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Dale Earnhardt Jr. was involved in a frightening, multi-car accident at Daytona International Speedway, where his car flipped upside down as he skidded along the superstretch during the Nationwide Series opener.

Earnhardt was battered from every direction Saturday as other cars could not avoid hitting the overturned No. 88 Chevrolet. He slid through the grass, and the car finally flipped back onto its wheels before coming to a stop.

“You don’t want to flip one upside down and it not be spectacular. You don’t want to waste your opportunity, right?” Earnhardt joked after the mandatory ambulance ride to the care center.

“It’s good to flip upside down every once in a while, but it’s just too expensive for me.”

Earnhardt was driving a car for his JR Motorsports team, which is short on sponsorship money but committed to running a full season. His 10-car accident happened shortly after racing resumed from an earlier 12-car accident that collected Danica Patrick.

Patrick was making her Nationwide Series debut for JR Motorsports, so the two accidents left Earnhardt with a pair of wrecked race cars.

“We’re going to have to go back and balance our books after that. This has been a rough day for JR Motorsports,” he said. “We do our books by the month pretty much, and kind of know where we are financially. We were looking for about $400,000 between now and the end of the season, trying to work that in somehow and find that or cut that somewhere.

“We just knocked ourselves back a few steps. It was an expensive day for us.”

Tony Stewart went on to win the race for the fifth time in six years, taking control after Earnhardt’s accident and going unchallenged over the final 24 laps.