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A Track Through Time

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By TONY FABRIZIO | The Tampa Tribune

Published: February 10, 2008

Richard Petty was a 21-year-old kid when he showed up for the first Daytona 500 in 1959. When he pulled through the tunnel of newly built Daytona International Speedway, he saw a great expanse of nothing.

"We inspected the cars in the grass," Petty, 69, said recently. "And then it rained for a couple of days and the cars were actually sitting in water, because that was a swamp to begin with."

Today, Daytona ranks among the most famous racing venues in the world. Its crown jewel, the Daytona 500, will be run for the 50th time on Feb. 17, and Petty, who finished 57th in the first 500 before going on to win a record seven times, will be the honorary starter.

"In the beginning, Daytona was just another race," Petty said. "Darlington was our biggest race, and it took Daytona two or three years just to get even with Darlington. Then it didn't take long for Daytona to blow it on out."

As NASCAR has taken off in the past 15 years, becoming the most popular form of auto racing in America, the prestige of the race has grown to rival that of the nearly 100-year-old Indianapolis 500. In January 2007, Forbes.com named the Daytona 500 the world's most valuable motor sports brand, ranking it ahead of the World Series, NBA Finals and NCAA Final Four.

Just as the Indy 500 has immortalized the likes of A.J. Foyt, Al and Bobby Unser, Mario Andretti and Rick Mears, the Daytona 500 helped make racing legends of Petty, Cale Yarborough, Bobby Allison, Dale Jarrett, Dale Earnhardt Sr. and Jeff Gordon. At times, it has worked in reverse, with the driver, through magical performance or triumphant celebration, raising the value of a victory.

Volumes would be needed to chronicle the history of the Daytona 500. Here, we touch on the most memorable races.

And The Winner Is...

Petty or Beauchamp? Beauchamp or Petty? The question hung for three days after the inaugural 500.

Problem was, photo-finish equipment had not yet been installed at the new speedway.

The famous photo of Johnny Beauchamp, Lee Petty and Joe Weatherly, who was two laps down, coming to the finish together was deemed inconclusive for determining the winner because it was taken from an angle in front of the line and before the cars got there. NASCAR president Bill France Sr. ordered newsreel footage that had to come from New York.

Some 72 hours after the race, France declared Petty the winner.

Richard Petty believes the publicity generated from the drawn-out process of his father's victory was a boon to the new event. "I don't think it was intentional, but that really helped get it started," he said.

Angels Without Wings

In the early years, the 31-degree banking in the Daytona turns was topped by a guardrail, which proved quite ineffective for holding the cars of Lee Petty, Johnny Beauchamp and Richard Petty during the 1961 qualifying races.

Richard Petty's car flew up and over the three-story high banking in Turn 1 during the first qualifier. Miraculously, the car landed on its wheels and Petty was not seriously hurt. Lee Petty and Beauchamp weren't as fortunate. They tangled on the last lap of their race, broke through the guardrail on top of Turn 4 and plunged over the embankment.

The severe injuries Lee Petty sustained effectively ended his career. Beauchamp also was badly hurt.

In an irony for the ages, the Pettys had nicknamed their cars "The Blue Angels."

Big Heart, Tiny Miracle

Through 49 editions of the Daytona 500, there is no story more uplifting than DeWayne "Tiny" Lund's win in 1963.

Lund, an imposing 270 pounds, had never won a race in what was then NASCAR's Grand National series. The Iowa native was in Daytona shopping for a ride when Marvin Panch, a friend who drove for powerful Wood Brothers Racing, crashed spectacularly while testing a sports car. Lund helped pull Panch from the fiery wreckage.

As a way of showing their gratitude, Panch and team co-owner Glen Wood asked Lund to drive their No. 21 Ford in the 500. Clever engineering and strategy by the Wood brothers allowed Lund to complete the race with one fewer pit stop than his competition, and Lund, though he ran out of fuel in the final corner, took the checkered flag.

Months later, Lund and four other drivers who helped rescue Panch were awarded the Carnegie Medal of Honor. Lund was killed in a crash at Talladega in 1975.

Tall Order For Gritty Italian

John Holman of the famed Holman Moody team did not want Mario Andretti to drive for him in the 1967 Daytona 500. He and others thought Andretti was too short for a stock car. But Holman's partner, Ralph Moody, believed in the young Italian immigrant, and Andretti was signed as a secondary driver to Fred Lorenzen.

For the race, Andretti had his No. 97 Ford set up so loosely nobody wanted to get near him. He would enter a turn from the edge of the apron and let the car drift all the way to the wall, akin to a sprint car cornering on dirt.

Andretti not only surprised practically everyone by not crashing, he went on to lead 112 laps and win the race.

It has long been assumed Andretti had his car set up loosely because he wanted it that way. But he said recently he was given an underpowered engine for qualifying, and had to lay his spoiler back to 65 degrees to decrease drag. That gave him little downforce in the corners.

"You had to race with it, and I was stuck with it," he said. "Would I race with it like that now? No. I had no choice. I had to drive accordingly, and accordingly meant I had to lead."

Pearson In The Clutch

Whenever the subject of greatest finishes in NASCAR history comes up, the 1976 Daytona 500 is among the first mentioned.

The race came down to a last-lap duel between two rivals for the ages, Richard Petty and David Pearson. Petty led at the white flag, but Pearson, using Petty's slipstream to execute a "slingshot" pass, went by on the backstretch.

To the surprise of a then-record crowd of 125,000, Petty came back on the inside through Turn 4 and pulled ahead. But when he drifted up the banking, his rear fender clipped Pearson's left front bumper, and both cars careened into the wall.

Pearson had the presence of mind to depress his clutch to keep his engine running. With Petty's car spinning through the infield grass toward the line, Pearson straightened his car out and pointed it toward the finish line.

"Where's Richard?" Pearson hollered to his crew. Told that Petty's car had stopped 20 yards short of the line, Pearson covered the final few yards at about 30 mph for his lone Daytona 500 title.

Fight Upstages Petty's 7th 500 Win

Nearly three decades have passed, and Donnie Allison still gets flushed when he talks about the most famous fight in NASCAR history.

"People ask me what happened, and I don't know," Allison, 68, said recently. "I was in the front leading. Next thing I know, I was spun out going through the grass. Bobby and Cale might be able to tell you what happened. It does stick in my craw."

The 1979 Daytona 500, won by Richard Petty, is remembered for the last-lap crash between leaders Allison and Cale Yarborough and the fight that broke out between Allison, his brother Bobby and Yarborough. But the race was significant for other reasons as well.

In fact, some historians consider it the most important race in stock car racing history.

Pete And The Bird

Pete Hamilton was a blond-haired modified star from Massachusetts whose father had a PhD from Harvard. In 1970, he earned the biggest victory of his career, giving the exotic high-winged Plymouth SuperBird its lone Daytona 500 title.

While Hamilton's victory is often referred to as a huge upset, in retrospect, it wasn't such a big surprise. The 1968 Rookie of the Year was driving for powerful Petty Enterprises, and went on to win both Talladega races that year.

NASCAR effectively outlawed the winged SuperBird and Dodge Daytona after 1970, ruling they could be run only with a much smaller engine. But in the 1971 Daytona 500, driver Dick Brooks stubbornly ran the severely underpowered car anyway. He finished seventh.

Foyt By A Lot

A.J. Foyt was 37 years old and had claimed three of his four Indianapolis 500 victories when he showed up to drive a Wood Brothers Mercury in the 1972 Daytona 500. He had competed in select NASCAR races since 1963 and taken command of the 1971 Daytona 500 before running out of gas.

In 1972, though, he would not be denied. He beat Charlie Glotzbach by almost two laps.

Foyt, named co-driver of the 20th century with Mario Andretti, won seven times in NASCAR's premier division.

210.364 MPH!

Bill Elliott may not be the greatest driver in Daytona 500 history, but he is the fastest. The north Georgia native shattered his qualifying record by 5 mph in 1987, winning the pole at 210.364 mph.

Because horsepower-sapping restrictor plates were required the next year, after Bobby Allison's car nearly went into the grandstands at Talladega, Elliott's qualifying record has never been approached.

Elliott won the Daytona 500 in 1985 and 1987.

Crusty And The Kid

The Allisons, leaders of the old "Alabama Gang," had made their mark on the Daytona 500 by 1988, but they weren't nearly done. Bobby Allison not only became a three-time 500 winner that year, but at 50, became the oldest winner.

More significantly, he experienced the joy of glancing in the rearview mirror as he crossed the finish line and seeing his 26-year-old son, Davey, finish second. It's still the only 1-2 father-son finish in race history.

Four years later, Davey won the 500, making the Allisons the second father-son tandem to win the race, with Lee and Richard Petty. They would later be joined by Dale Earnhardt Sr. and Dale Jr.

Davey Allison lost his life in 1993 while attempting to land his helicopter at Talladega.

D.W. And Pure Joy

When his engine started sputtering with three laps to go in the 1989 Daytona 500, Darrell Waltrip seemed to will his Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet to victory. Afterward, third-place finisher Dale Earnhardt Sr. barked, "I'd sure like to see that fuel tank."

Waltrip's victory celebration, starting with a joyous, "I won the Daytona 500! I won the Daytona 500!" and continuing with an "Ickey Shuffle" dance, is among the most memorable in history.

One Audacious Move

Jeff Gordon has won 81 Cup races, but none with a more daring move than the one he put on Rusty Wallace in 1999 to claim the second of his three Daytona 500 victories. With 10 laps to go, Gordon went below the yellow line in Turn 1, an area since ruled out of bounds, and trapped Wallace behind the damaged and lapped car of Ricky Rudd. Wallace had to choose between backing off and risking a major crash.

He backed off.

Earnhardt: The Best And Worst Of Times

The 1990 Daytona 500 not only marked the most agonizing of Dale Earnhardt Sr.'s many near-misses in NASCAR's most important race, it also provided one of the biggest upsets.

Earnhardt dominated most of the race, leading 155 of 200 laps. With 30 laps to go, he had built a staggering, 27-second lead.

On the last lap, he seemed to have the race in hand. But as he sped down the backstretch in the famed No. 3 Chevy, Earnhardt ran over a piece of metal that came off Rick Wilson's car. It blew his right rear tire.

Derrike Cope, then a little-known driver from Spanaway, Wash., driving a fast Buddy Parrott-crewed Chevrolet, shot by to take a most unlikely victory.

Dale And Dale Show

Dale Jarrett was 36 years old and had one Winston Cup win coming into the 1993 season.

Imagine the surprise when Jarrett, with a drafting push from Geoff Bodine, passed the Intimidator himself, Dale Earnhardt Sr., just past the white flag in the Daytona 500.

Adding to the excitement, Dale's father, two-time NASCAR champion Ned Jarrett, got to call the final lap for CBS.

"C'mon, Dale," Ned Jarrett said. "Go, baby, go!"

Jarrett closed the deal, handing Joe Gibbs, a three-time Super Bowl winning coach in his second year as a NASCAR team owner, a Daytona 500 title.

He beat Earnhardt a second time in the 1996 Daytona 500 and won for a third time in 2000.

Success At Last, But Then ...

By 1998 there were doubts Dale Earnhardt Sr. would ever get the one, big victory eluding him in an otherwise legendary career. He was 46 years old, an age at which others had declined, and had gone winless for the first time in 16 years in 1997.

But Earnhardt's friends kept telling him 1998, NASCAR's 50-year anniversary season, was his year to win the Daytona 500. It turned out, they were right. When Earnhardt crossed the finish line after leading the final 61 laps, crew members from nearly every team lined up on pit road to congratulate him. The victory was the culmination of years of winning everything at Daytona - 30 races in all - but the Daytona 500.

The victory came in Earnhardt's 20th attempt, three weeks after John Elway finally won a Super Bowl for the Denver Broncos.

Three years later, on the last lap of the 2001 Daytona 500, Earnhardt crashed hard while trying to block a line of cars so Michael Waltrip and Dale Earnhardt Jr. could get away. NASCAR president Mike Helton gave the tragic news hours later: "We've lost Dale Earnhardt."

Earnhardt's death transcended not only auto racing, but all of sports. It led newscasts and made the covers of national magazines. It also became the impetus for sweeping driver safety improvements in NASCAR.

Dale Jr.: The Next Generation

Dale Earnhardt Jr. didn't have to wait as long as his father to win the Daytona 500. Three years after Dale Sr.'s death in the 2001 race, Junior passed Tony Stewart with 19 laps to go and led the rest of the way.`

"I ain't ashamed to say that I put a lot of emphasis on coming down here and winning this race, just because of what I've been through down here," Earnhardt said afterward. "You see Dad run second, blow tires out, flip over on the back straightaway - this, that and the other - year after year after year.

"There were not many things, if anything, that ate that man's insides out like losing this race over and over."

Sprint To The Finish Shatters Martin's Dream

Mark Martin has finished in the top five in the point standings 12 times, yet hasn't won a championship or the Daytona 500.

He clutched his abdomen when asked recently to reflect on coming about two feet short of winning last year's 500.

"I still get a knot in the pit of my stomach," he said.

Kevin Harvick came from sixth place on the final lap, pulled even with Martin in Turn 4 and beat the popular veteran to the line as a fiery seven-car crash broke out behind them. NASCAR officials chose to ignore a procedure calling for caution lights to be turned on when the wreck began, which would have frozen the running order.

Martin, demonstrating the class that has characterized him throughout his career, never protested publicly.

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