Motorsports

Daytona 500: Event crowns a sport's kings

By Brant James, Times Staff Writer
Published February 17, 2008

Crew members from many teams greeted Dale Earnhardt 10 years ago Friday, when he finally won the Daytona 500 on his 20th try.
	[AP photo (1998)]

ADVERTISEMENT [AP photo (1967)] Mario Andretti gets a kiss in Victory Lane after his lone Daytona 500 win. He went on to much greater fame in other disciplines.

DAYTONA BEACH - A receiving line of adoring fans and respectful well-wishers had channeled Dale Earnhardt into Victory Lane. His emotions were beginning to overtake him as he accepted the congratulations of his wife, Teresa, team owner Richard Childress and anyone else who could get close enough to the emblematic black No.3 Chevrolet.

"We won it! We won it! We won it!" the seven-time Sprint Cup champion said. He had outlasted the Daytona 500, claiming victory in his 20th attempt, Feb.15, 1998, adding the missing piece of a heralded career.

Because Earnhardt knew, Childress said, that his story was incomplete without the most storied of all victories.

"He wanted it real bad," Childress said of Earnhardt, who died on the final lap of the 2001 Daytona 500. "And to see him finally get it was the most rewarding part of it."

The Daytona 500 is one of the world's classic races, a test of courage, of greatness - a curiosity for open-wheel stars such as A.J. Foyt and Mario Andretti in the 1960s, then a rising national phenomenon after the Allison boys and Cale Yarborough tussled in 1979.

And it's a kingmaker. Most great American drivers have won it. And Earnhardt knew it.

"To drivers, it's something they need on their resume to complete their career," Childress said. "There have been greats that have retired that didn't win it, but the greats have also won it."

Which raises the question: Is the Daytona 500 great because racing's greatest drivers, such as Foyt, Andretti, Richard Petty, Earnhardt and Yarborough, won it, or does winning it make one great? Foyt and Andretti, the only drivers to have won the Indianapolis 500 as well, say they did it for the challenge in a time when major manufacturers were willing to field crossover bids for their stars in races that had international sanction.

"To me it was a great race, that's why they wanted to be part of it," three-time winner Jeff Gordon said. "But I think it has become a greater race because of these guys not only competing in it but winning it."

The top six - and eight of 10 - drivers on NASCAR's all-time wins list have raised the Harley J. Earl trophy. But so did Pete Hamilton (four career wins), Derrike Cope (two) and Michael Waltrip, who claimed two of his four career wins in the race.

"The greatest race drivers won," said 1960 winner Junior Johnson, credited with discovering the draft that has dictated racing at Daytona since that second installment. "Some people win it and never win another race. But that given day, he was the best."

Tony Stewart, twice a champion at NASCAR's highest level and once in the Indy Racing League, is undeniably one of the greatest of his generation but has been denied in the Daytona 500 just as he was in the Indianapolis 500. With 32 Sprint Cup wins and two titles, will he be considered great without winning the sport's greatest race? Foyt, who co-holds the record with four Indy 500 wins, said Stewart is "already a great driver" and "doesn't have to take a backseat to anybody," but that doesn't keep the bawdy Texan from lording his accomplishments over his friend.

"I told him, 'When you win enough races, you can talk to me,' and he said, 'I've won some races,'" Foyt said, cackling. "I said, 'Win something big. You won Le Mans? No. You won Indy? No. You won Daytona? No.' I said, 'Well, don't talk to me.' I give him a bad time. I'm always giving him a bad time."

Many winners speak of their feat as a product of providence. Sometimes fortune is as crucial a component as talent in a race that tests metal, mettle and patience.

"You luck out is what you do," Johnson said.

Stewart has deflected attention this season - especially acute considering the sizeable effort and so-far sizeable Toyota return in its second Cup season - saying winning the 50th installment would probably feel just like winning the 49th.

For he and others, that would be a relief. Dale Earnhardt Jr. spoke of that emotion in 2004 when he fulfilled what his fans, and those of his late father, felt was almost a divine quest.

That burden gone, he speaks of giving the track where he and his father raced so well but only own - as yet - one 500 win apiece a "whippin'."

"This is where we lost him, and I want to keep whipping it," he said. "I want to make it a special place."

Because it can make you great.

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[Last modified February 16, 2008, 22:54:18]