by Joe Garner
His seventh Daytona 500 was another new record for Richard Petty, but it raised the same old question: is it better to be good, or is it better to be lucky?
However, with just 26 laps remaining, the Ghost of Races Past appeared at the 1981 Daytona contest, and as it was during the 1970s the visit was another good news/bad news situation. The latter slapped Allison: the team miscalculated fuel mileage and his sputtering silver-and-black Le Mans had to coast, out of gas, half a lap back to the pits. Mr. Lucky inherited the lead, ducked in for a lightning-fast, splash-of-fuel-only pit stop, and motored home four seconds ahead of a visibly upset and utterly disappointed Bobby Allison.
His seventh Daytona 500 was another new record for Richard Petty, but it raised the same old question: is it better to be good, or is it better to be lucky? And NASCAR's version of the answer would simply be: it's best to be good, to be lucky, and to be the King.
1989 Daytona 500: Waltrip's Lucky 17
The big question bouncing around the press tents and garages in the days leading up to the 1989 Daytona 500 had nothing to do with horsepower, aerodynamics, or radial tires. It was the 0-for-16 bull's-eye clearly visible on three-time NASCAR Cup Series champion Darrell Waltrip. Without actually saying it, there were a lot of people thinking it:
How will he lose this year's race?
There were black marks beside Waltrip's name for every previous attempt in the Great American Race. Bad cars, bad tires, bad decisions, bad crashes—you name the bad break, it found its way to, or back to, Waltrip. Sixteen years is a very long time to eat the same thing over and over again…especially if it's crow on the menu. The pressure, as it had every year since 1973, inched up just a little higher.
As the 1989 pre-500 Speedweeks festivities unfolded, two things were apparent: Chevrolet was the car to beat, and Ken Schrader had the fastest one on the track. When the checkered flag fell for the big race, he simply underlined what everyone already expected by leading 114 of the 200 laps. Dale Earnhardt was also armed with a very fast Monte Carlo but one hampered by a fuel flow problem. His car ran well in a draft but sputtered and coughed when it led, so he stayed safely tucked behind Schrader for most of the day.
Around Lap 165 Waltrip radioed his crew chief, Jeff Hammond, with a bold idea: since we can't outrun Schrader and Earnhardt, let's take a chance—a huge chance—and try to beat ’em on fuel mileage. Hammond immediately agreed to roll the dice. “We were running a half-second less than the leaders,” he said. “Our calculations indicated we could go fifty laps easy, and we'd just have to squeeze out three or four more.”
As the laps clicked off, Waltrip in the lead, Schrader and Earnhardt in frantic pursuit, the anxiety levels climbed. “I thought I was out of gas a couple of times,” Waltrip said. “I'd slosh the car around, get another ounce and go another hundred yards.
Darrell Waltrip drives his Tide #17 car to victory against the Michael Waltrip #30 Country Time car during the Daytona 500 at the Daytona Speedway on February 19, 1989 at Daytona Beach, Florida.
Hammond must have had two or three heart attacks. One time I yelled on the radio, ‘That's it, Jeff, I'm out.’ Then I yelled back, ‘No, not yet, I'm still going.’ We did that two or three times. It was wild.”
Ward Burton is given the checkered flag as he wins the 2002 Daytona 500 at the Daytona International Speedway in Daytona Beach, Florida, Sunday, February 17, 2002. In second is Elliott Sandler (21); third is Geoffrey Bodine (09); and fourth is Kurt Busch (97).
But on this day, Waltrip's streak of Daytona luck changed. It was his 17th Daytona 500. His daughter, Jessica, was 17 months old on February 17. And his car number was 17. Waltrip took the checkered flag and celebrated by spiking his race helmet and performing an abbreviated version of the Icky Shuffle, the touchdown dance popularized by NFL rookie sensation Icky Woods, who led the Cincinnati Bengals that year to the “other” Super Bowl.
2002 Daytona 500: Marlin Bends the Rules
As the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing ramped up the glittery high-profile preparations for the opening race of the 2002 season, it was very apparent how much the sport had evolved from its 1940s backroads roots. But million-dollar winners' shares, multimillion-dollar race teams, mega-million-dollar television contacts, and the high-tech racing machines couldn't completely obscure what the NASCAR press releases ignored. At the end of the day and the end of the race, it only mattered who was first across the finish line, not how you got there.
The sport originally blossomed when bootleggers in souped-up cars began racing each other to determine who was fastest. While that outlaw survivorism eventually had to bend to fair play, the rule-bending never entirely left the sport.
The sport originally blossomed when bootleggers in souped-up cars began racing each other to determine who was fastest. While that outlaw survivorism eventually had to bend to fair play, the rule-bending never entirely left the sport.
So while it may have been a surprise, it wasn't a complete shock to the people watching the 2002 Daytona 500—200,000 spectators and another 18.8 million tuned in to the race broadcast—when under the red flag Sterling Marlin dropped the driver's-side window net and hopped out of the Coors Light Dodge to bend his crumpled fender, and a rule or two.
When Mark Martin and Michael Waltrip tangled with five laps remaining, Marlin crunched his right front fender in a collision with race leader Jeff Gordon, but still beat Ward Burton's Caterpillar Dodge back to the start-finish line. NASCAR officials threw the red flag, which stopped the twenty-nine cars remaining on the track while the debris was cleared for a final three-lap shootout.
Item 10-5 of the 2002 NASCAR Cup Series rule-book is very clear: “Repairs or service of any nature will not be permitted when the race is halted due to a red flag.” But knowing that his front tire would almost certainly explode due to friction from the fender rub, Marlin and crew chief Tony Glover decided to roll the dice and hope for the best. “I saw Earnhardt do it at Richmond one time in 1986, he got out and cleaned his windshield, so I thought it was okay,” Marlin said.
There was a stunned silence, followed by a collective, “What is Sterling doing?” Which was of course followed by a swarm of on-track NASCAR officials, who informed the indignant Marlin he'd have to start at the end of the lead-lap cars.
Ward Burton inherited first place and beat Elliott Sadler, Geoff Bodine, and Kurt Busch to the finish line. “Today we had some luck,” said Burton of his first Daytona 500 win. “We were just in the right place at the right time.”
And Marlin? Instead of crashing with a flat tire, he was able to scramble back during the three-lap rush to finish in eighth place.
Janet Guthrie: The First Woman of the Great American Race
If it's possible to categorize as routine a race where forty-two competitors chase one another at 180 mph and bang fenders for 500 miles, then the 1977 Daytona 500 was pretty much as expected.
The previous season Cale Yarborough finished forty-second—dead last—at Daytona but a year later dominated the race. He managed to avoid the usual high-octane chicanery, survived a cut tire and a wild spin 'n' slide through the infield without losing so much as a fender or a lap, and won 1977's edition of the Great American Race. Richard Petty was Yarborough's only real challenger that day, but the engine in his Dodge blew up on Lap 111. Darrell Waltrip and David Pearson also had motors that went south before the checkered flag. Following Yarborough, the rest of the top five that day was Benny Parsons, Buddy Baker, Coo Coo Marlin, and Richard Brooks. Ricky Rudd finished twenty-second in his first Daytona 500 attempt.
But Rudd wasn't the highest-placing rookie. That honor was earned with a twelfth-place finish by a thirty-eight-year-old driver with thirteen years of sports car road-racing experience, three Indianapolis 500 starts, a physics degree from the University of Michigan, a pilot's license, and enough on the ball to have made it through to the second round of NASA's Scientist-Astronaut program.
And one more bit of information about that tw
elfth-place driver: all but one year of their elementary education was completed at Miss Harris' Florida School for Girls.
Janet Guthrie at Daytona in 1977.
Gutherie holds her own at Daytona.
Finishing twelfth that February afternoon in Daytona was Janet Guthrie, the first woman ever to drive in the Great American Race. She beat the odds—and a whole lot of her male competitors—on her way forward from the back of the pack. This accomplishment, in retrospect extraordinary by anyone's standards, irritated and upset some fellow competitors and fans, and rated maybe a single line in the Daytona 500 stories that appeared in newspapers around the country the following day. But race winner Yarborough, legendary for his toughness as a NASCAR competitor and usually even tougher to impress, was the first to stand up and salute Guthrie for her effort.
“She drives as well as any rookie I've seen. There is no question about her ability to race with us. More power to her. She has ‘made it’ in what I think is the most competitive racing circuit in the world.”
2004 Daytona 500: Junior Wins!
In the two Daytona 500s following the tragic 2001 race that took the life of his father, Dale Earnhardt Jr. seemed to be building the same snakebitten résumé that kept the menacing number 3 Chevy—and Dale Sr.—out of Victory Lane for nineteen straight years.
In 2002, a blown tire damaged Junior's car and he finished thirty-sixth. The following year it was the alternator that went south, relegating him to twenty-ninth place. So heading into the 2004 season expectations for the number 8 team should have been somewhat realistic.
But it was Junior himself who raised eyebrows in the days leading up to the 500. First was a great run at the Rolex 24 at Daytona with co-drivers Tony Stewart and Andy Wallace in a sleek, stylish, and wickedly fast Crawford Chevrolet. A week later Earnhardt pushed Dale Jarrett to the Bud Shootout title, and then won a Gatorade Twin 125-mile qualifying race to put himself in the second row for the start of the Daytona 500. And when pole sitter Greg Biffle was moved to the back of the field because of an engine change, NASCAR's favorite son was suddenly starting on the front row.
After the green flag finally waved on that sunny Sunday afternoon, Junior was off like a shot and leading the race before the end of the first lap. He stayed there for the next 29 and was up front three other times during the first 250 miles. And when he wasn't leading it was Earnhardt's pal Tony Stewart in charge; together they were a dominating combination.
“Everybody tried to separate Dale and me,” Stewart said. “But our plan was to get together and run together.”
The duo stayed in or near the front until green-flag pit stops on Lap 169 shuffled the field, but it only took Stewart six trips around to regain the lead. And just six laps after that, Junior made the final pass of the day and raced to the checkered flag to claim his first Daytona 500. “Trust me, I did everything I could to win this race,” Stewart said afterwards. “He outdrove us and beat us, plain and simple.”
“Good God, I'm the Daytona 500 champion!” an elated Dale Jr. screamed during the Victory Lane celebration, and the 200,000 wildly cheering fans thoroughly enjoyed a NASCAR family-style win. But besides the victory, and the honor of joining the Pettys and Allisons on the father-son Daytona 500 winner's pedestal, Junior told the assembled media he was able to share an even greater thrill with the Intimidator during the closing laps of the race.
“My dad was in the passenger seat right with me today. And I am sure he had a blast.”
Dale Earnhardt Jr., driver of #8 Chevy, celebrates with his crew at the finish line after winning the Daytona 500, Sunday, February 15, 2004 at Daytona International Speedway in Daytona Beach, Florida.
Chapter Eight
DALE EARNHARDT
The Intimidator
He was tenacious. He was fearsome. He was seat-of-the-pants, white-knuckle racing at its finest. And following his dogfight at The Winston in Charlotte on May 17, 1987, Dale Earnhardt would forever be known as “The Intimidator.”
Daytona 500 Victory: Twenty Years in the Making
Call them the unlucky. The star-crossed. The big names without the big games. For the hapless Boston Red Sox, it was the World Series. For Ivan Lendl, Wimbledon. Dan Marino and John Elway, the Super Bowl.
And for Dale Earnhardt, it was the Daytona 500.
Every February for two disheartening decades, one of NASCAR's most renowned drivers, a man who'd conquered just about every major race there was to win, rode into Daytona to claim the holy grail of the NASCAR Cup series. Nineteen times he'd faced down the Great American Race. Nineteen times he'd trudged home empty-handed, a beaten man.
“It was unbelievable,” race analyst Benny Parsons said. “If you had written the story of Dale and the Daytona 500 and taken it to Hollywood, they would have laughed you out of town and said, 'Get out of here! No one has this much bad luck!'”
Dale Earnhardt takes the checkered flag he chased for over twenty years.
Earnhardt's Daytona tribulations made Job look fortunate. There were blown leads, unexpected breakdowns, last-minute heroics that fell nanoseconds short. Not once but twice he'd been edged out on the final lap. He'd blown a tire a breath away from the checkered flag. He had run out of gas, flipped his car, blew an engine, all with the brass ring tickling his fingertips.
“I've won a lot of Daytona 499s,” the perennial bridesmaid once quipped.
But it was no joke. It burned him up. And he knew that for all his big-time wins, his record seven Cup championships, his untold millions in earnings, and the admiration of legions of fans, his career would never be legit until he landed the big kahuna. It was that simple.
Few thought 1998 would be his year. At forty-six, Earnhardt was coming off one of the most disappointing seasons of his career and was riding a fifty-nine-race winless streak that stretched back to March 1996. He'd never seen a slump like this. But he surely cocked an eyebrow when a month earlier his bad-luck brother John Elway managed to bag his own white whale after fifteen years of heartbreak.
“If Elway can win a Super Bowl,” Earnhardt declared before climbing into his legendary black number 3 Chevy for attempt number twenty on February 15, “I can win the Daytona 500.” He rubbed the lucky penny he'd glued to the dashboard, strapped in, and prepared to exorcise his demons.
Gunning the brand-new engine, he jumped out to an early lead and held on for 34 laps. Overtaken by Daytona's defending champ, Jeff Gordon, Earnhardt fell a full ten cars off the pace, but in classic Intimidator style managed to hammer and draft his way back through the crowded field. In six laps he'd made up five spots and was soon tailing the lead pack, stalking Gordon.
By Lap 121 of the 200-lap contest, the hunter caught his prey, and he and Gordon, yoked together like drafthorses, blistered down the backstretch until the number 24 Chevy nailed a chunk of debris and mangled his front air-dam. Bad luck. Earnhardt blew by him to retake the point. A determined Rusty Wallace then barreled in to challenge, but the Intimidator received a helpful bump from teammate Mike Skinner that sent him into the clear with just 23 laps to go. The crowd of 175,000 held its breath and waited for the wrath of God.
Yet somehow the wheels stayed on and the engine continued to turn. With the field stacked three-wide and knocking the tar out of each other in his rearview, Earnhardt stormed toward the final lap. And then a collision—one that remarkably didn't involve the number 3 car—brought out the caution, preserving his lead. It was over. Ralph Dale Earnhardt Sr. had won the Daytona 500.
“I'll admit it,” the quintessential tough guy conceded, “my eyes watered up coming to take the checkered. …That's one of the greatest feelings in your life, to work that many years and come so close and be so dominant and finally win that race.”
Friends and foes alike gather along pit road to congratulate the Intimidator for his Daytona 500 win.
The scene as Earnhardt rolled toward Victory Lane was pure magic, as virtually every member of every team, joined by the longtime racing press, thronged onto
pit road to mob him with congratulatory hand-shakes and high-fives and heartfelt slaps to the roof of the number 3 car. It no longer mattered that the old outlaw had wrecked them at Bristol or spun them at Talladega or cussed them silly in the garage at Darlington. For that moment, he was everybody's champ, and even the “Anybody but Earnhardt” brigade in the grandstands couldn't help cracking a smile.
Dale Earnhardt and crew celebrate his 1998 victory in the Daytona 500.
“It's kinda neat,” said longtime on-track nemesis Rusty Wallace, who once remarked semi-seriously that the Intimidator would down his own mother to win. “As much as he's meant to the sport, he deserves it.”
“We all loved for him to be there [in Victory Lane],” Jeff Gordon told reporters. “He's earned it, man.”
After a quick detour to the infield grass to carve out a “3” with a series of wild donuts, Earnhardt entered the winner's circle to a raucous cheer. And if anybody had forgotten why he was NASCAR's signature personality, he made it clear when he bounded onto the podium for his victory interview.
“I'm here! And I've got that monkey off my back!” he bellowed, hurling a filthy stuffed gorilla at the press corps, his steel-eyed glare softening into a rakish smile beneath the gunslinger's mustache. Suddenly, he was a cocky rookie again, strutting and preening and promising an eighth championship by the end of the year. And just as suddenly, he turned philosophical.
“I wrote the book here,” he said, recalling his years of disappointment, all the close calls, the near misses and frustrations. “This is the last chapter. We'll start a new book now.”
Sadly, that new volume would be far too short. Just three years and three days later, on the very same spot where he'd notched the most important victory of his life, forty-nine-year-old Dale Earnhardt would be killed after smacking the wall head-on going into the final lap of the Daytona 500.