The Daytona 500, there’s nothing else like it.
Thursday, February 14th, 2008Story and photo by: Drew Hierwarter
So many things have been written about the Daytona 500 that it’s really difficult to come up with something new. After all, there have been 49 Daytona 500’s now and it has been the first race of the NASCAR season for much of that time and it’s been the biggest race of the NASCAR season for all of that time. But the storied old speedway wears well it’s mantel of being the most important race for a driver to win. Many drivers consider a Daytona 500 win to be necessary to calling their career successful.
“A lot of guys will give you a big speech about how their career doesn’t have to include a Daytona 500 win to be complete,” stock car great and former winner Buddy Baker says with a chuckle. “I used to say that, too. But I was just trying to convince myself. . .” In fact, many great drivers have had enormous success without winning the 500. Eleven of the twenty three NASCAR champions since 1959 have not won “The Great American Race”. Ned Jarrett won 50 races in his career and two championships, but failed to win the 500 in six tries. 1989 champion Rusty Wallace ran in twenty three 500s and never won. Terry Labonte won two NASCAR championships and ran in 27 Daytona 500s without a win. Others who have had great careers without a Daytona 500 win include Mark Martin, Harry Gant, and Ricky Rudd.
When the track opened in February of 1959, very few drivers had ever seen anything like it. “Here’s a bunch of guys who were running on quarter-mile dirt tracks three nights a week,” says seven time winner Richard Petty, “We come up through that tunnel, and it’s two and half miles of the blackest blacktop you’ve ever seen. The turns are banked higher than anything in the world, and they’re taller than any building that most of us had ever seen. It was like, wait, you want us to drive on that?” In testing just a week prior to the official opening, Fireball Roberts ran over 146 miles per hour, which at the time was only a few miles per hour slower than the winning speed for the Indianapolis 500. “There’s only one limit to how fast you can go there,” Roberts told his buddies, “How much engine you bring and how much nerve you have.”
More than 200,000 people will witness this year’s running of the 500 in person. In 1959, 42,000 bought a grandstand ticket. The rumors were that Bill France, Sr. had leveraged everything he could to build the track and fund the purse and if the race had not been successful, he would’ve been broke. It worked out okay. This year, the total purse for the Daytona 500 will be just under $19 million. The driver finishing in last place will receive $249,000. The entire purse for the 1959 race was only $68,000! If you couldn’t be at the track in 1959, you had no way to know the outcome as the race wasn’t even carried on the radio. This year’s race will be broadcast around the world on live TV in more than a dozen languages.
The difference between winning and losing the Daytona 500 can mean the difference between being somebody and being lost in the back pages of the record books. Derrick Cope only won two NASCAR Cup races in his entire career. But because one of those two wins was the Daytona 500, Cope is listed right along with names like Lee Petty, Buddy Baker, Mario Andretti, Dale Earnhardt, A.J. Foyt, Darrell Waltrip, and Benny Parsons. All of whom won the 500 only once. And maybe that’s a big part of the magic of Daytona, and why, every February the drivers who have yet to win there, and the ones who have, return to try again. “I never get tired of coming up out of that tunnel into the infield,” three-time winner Dale Jarrett says. “You come up through there, and see Turn 4 to your left and the front stretch to your right. It never gets old. You can’t help but think to yourself, I’ve got a shot to win this thing.”