The end of one season means the beginning of the next, and that means Daytona 500, the granddaddy of all.
By BRANT JAMES
Published February 7, 2004
[AP photos]
Preparations, including checking and marking tires, begin for the Daytona 500 the second the checkered flag falls at Homestead the season before.
Dale Earnhardt Jr. checks the front end of his car during preseason testing at Daytona International Speedway.
Michael Waltrip has won just four times, but twice he captured the Daytona 500.
Web Journal Off to the races: Check out the blog by Times sportswriter Brant James as he reports from Speed Weeks in Daytona Beach.
DAYTONA BEACH - Engines were barely cold after the season-ending race at Homestead-Miami Speedway in November, the confetti from Matt Kenseth's championship celebration floating around the apron when preparations began anew. There would be no complaining about an offseason that is too short or weariness after a 38-race campaign.
The big game was barely three months away.
Just as every baseball team begins the spring hopeful that a clean slate equals a fighting chance, so does every race team, from the monied and successful Dale Earnhardt Inc., to the one-car BAM Racing operation. Each believes the biggest prize in stock car racing is winnable.
So they start working early, when health, resources and attention are at maximum.
"I like that we have the whole offseason to prepare for the biggest race," said Tony Stewart, who finished seventh in the Daytona 500 last year. "When they drop the flag at Homestead, this becomes the focus."
As the first race on the Nextel Cup schedule, the Daytona 500 is the Super Bowl in August and everyone gets to play. Three months of attention on one race car make it plausible. And for those who raise the trophy it is all worth it.
"If you win this race, you know you have beaten every team with the best possible stuff they have in their shop," said Elliott Sadler, who finished second in the 2002 Daytona 500. "There's no "we're saving this car for next week or next year' or whatever. You win this race, you've beaten the best pit crews, the best strategy, the best cars, the best motors. We bring everything we've got in the shop. We come loaded for bear when we come to this race.
"It makes people's careers when you win this race. It's almost like a lifesaver," Sadler said. "You win this thing it does so many things for you. There are so many people it can affect if you win this race."
Witness Michael Waltrip. A controversial choice when Dale Earnhardt Sr. picked him to join his race team, he has won just four times in Winston Cup, but two came in the Daytona 500 and another in the Pepsi 400 at Daytona International Speedway.
"It's done a lot for my career because I hadn't won anywhere else (before Talladega last fall)," he said. "We saw what it meant to (brother) Darrell Waltrip in '89 and to Dale Earnhardt when he finally knocked it down in '98. It's a huge event and I'm real thankful for the success I've had here."
Speedways, often ugly and stark places no matter how they are decorated before race weekends, do not conjure the same nostalgic images as other sporting venues of yore. But they hold just as special a place for drivers because of the memories they associate with them.
"It's history," said Kyle Petty, who has finished third in the race three times. "Why is Churchill Downs always going to be Churchill Downs? Why is Boston Garden always going to be Boston Garden? Why is the Masters always the Masters? Because it is.
"You can go and build another golf course better than Augusta, but Augusta will always be Augusta because the great players have played there, and for us, all the great stock car drivers have run and won here."
And died here. In a morbid sort of sentimentality, the fact that drivers such as Neil Bonnett and most recently Dale Earnhardt in 2001 died trying to win the Daytona 500 makes winning it a form of tribute for current drivers.
"You come here and think of all the guys who've run here, guys who've lost their lives here and tried to win this race and paid the ultimate sacrifice," Petty said. "My grandfather (Lee) went over the wall here, over Turn 4 by the tunnel and spent 6-8 months in the hospital down here."
"Of all places to lose him, Daytona was the place because it's the jewel of our sport," Sadler said of Earnhardt. "And he was doing what he loved best and what he did best, the drafting and getting his car to the front. It definitely, I think, puts a lot of thought in evey driver's mind when they come here."
Which is why they wince - literally - at the notion that the Daytona 500 became the 11th-most important race on the schedule when NASCAR announced its driver champion would be decided by a 10-race shootout that ends the season.
"The Daytona 500 is so big it doesn't have to be at the end of the year," said Ken Schrader, who was second at Daytona in 1989.
Petty agreed. Daytona will always be Daytona.
"There's still going to be 300,000 people," Petty said, smiling. "They'll be here if you run it in the middle of the year, beginning of the year, or at the end of the year. If you move it to the end, does it make the season crescendo any better?"
