DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. - What is your favorite Daytona 500 memory?
Was it in 1979, when Richard Petty recorded "the most unexpected win I've ever had," when Cale Yarborough wrecked leader Donnie Allison on the last lap and then engaged Bobby Allison in a backstretch donnybrook?
How about 1998? That's when Dale Earnhardt, after 19 years of frustration, finally drove his No. 3 Chevrolet to Victory Lane and giddily exclaimed, "The Daytona 500 is ours! We won it, we won it, we won it!"
Or was it Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s victory in 2004, three years after the death of his father in a last-lap crash in the 500?
All month long, and even before that, the memories have come flooding back to Daytona International Speedway as it prepares to stage tomorrow's 50th Daytona 500, with its 24 living winners reunited.
"The 500 is the top race that we have; it'll always be," said Junior Johnson, who has won it as a driver, crew chief, and owner, but above all cherishes winning it behind the wheel in 1960. "If you have a great career in racing but you did not win this thing, then you ain't completed your racing career."
For the better part of the last half-century, the Daytona 500 has been more than just NASCAR's season-opening race.
It is intertwined with the growth of the sport from a regional series; the growth of the track, which moved from its beach course near Ponce Inlet to a high-banked, high-speed, 2 1/2-mile trioval built by NASCAR founder Bill France Sr.; and the growth of this town from a sleepy beachside burg into the "The World Center of Racing."
"When we came through the tunnel, I was a 21-year-old kid who probably ran 10-12 races in my lifetime," recalled Petty, whose father, Lee, won the first Daytona 500 in 1959 but wasn't declared the winner until three days later.
"To come down here to run the biggest race there was, there was one building in the infield, they had enough grandstands for probably 20,000-25,000 people. And that was it," Petty said. "It looked like it was forever down into the first and second corner, because there was nothing to tell you how far it was."
And so, in that first practice session, flagman Johnny Bruner instructed the field to take a few warm-up laps around the apron before testing the banking.
"So I go out in my convertible and I ran through the first and second corner, and through the third and fourth corner," said Petty, who started sixth but finished 57th out of 59 drivers in the inaugural 500. "I said, 'OK, I'm ready,' so I went up on the bank. When I came around again, [Bruner] got the black flag out. So, officially I'm the first black-flagged [driver] at this place."
Although former winners A.J. Foyt (1972) and Mario Andretti (1967) assembled impressive résumés outside stock car racing, the Daytona 500 has minted the careers of those lucky enough to outlast the 43-car field, maneuver through the 200 laps, and capture the checkered flag.
"You've got to have a fast car, but circumstances and variables throughout the race dictate who's going to be around at the end with a shot to win," said Earnhardt Jr., who in his first season with Hendrick Motorsports looks to be a strong contender. "I just had an amazing racecar that day [in 2004]. It's an incredible feeling. There's no way to describe it."
Geoff Bodine delivered owner Rick Hendrick the first of his six Daytona 500 triumphs in 1986 when he wrung every ounce of fuel out of his car to outlast Earnhardt. Derrike Cope shocked the world when he won in 1990 after Earnhardt cut a tire and dropped out of the lead in the third corner of the last lap. Ernie Irvan won in 1991, extending Earnhardt's streak of misery when he passed the Man in Black and relegated him to the Man in Back. With three laps to go, Earnhardt crashed with Davey Allison, forcing the race to end under caution.
"Daytona doesn't compare with anything," Bodine said. "It's our biggest race. As winners, we feel that way. It's the biggest race you can win in NASCAR. That's all that matters. It's a huge event worldwide."
Don't touch that dial
It wasn't until 1979, though, that CBS turned it into a huge event nationwide by televising the race from flag to flag. And NASCAR did not disappoint."In '79, when Donnie and Cale crashed on the backstretch, I was high on a radio tower in Turn 2," said Fox Sports announcer Mike Joy, who was then a radio reporter for Motor Racing Network. "When Jack Arute said, 'We'll have a new leader, they're in Turn 2 in front of Mike Joy,' I went 'Oops,' because I was watching the wreck up in Turn 3, just like everyone else. I spun around and said, 'It's Richard Petty!' You could hear in my voice I was as surprised as anybody."
Petty included. "You're running the last lap and you're about 20 seconds behind the leaders and we were racing for third place," said Petty, who surged to the lead ahead of runner-up Darrell Waltrip and third-place Foyt. "The [caution] light came on and me and Darrell looked at each other and went right around Foyt because that's when you could race back [to the yellow]."
As he sped by the smoldering wrecks of Yarborough and Donnie Allison, Petty realized he was racing for the win. When Bobby Allison went by, "I saw Donnie climb out of his car and I knew he wasn't hurt bad," Petty said. "I felt for him because he had been leading the race and I went on around and got the checkered flag - which is my job, to finish the race."
After finishing 11th, Bobby Allison circled the track to see if his brother needed a ride back.
"With that, Cale started hollering that the wreck was my fault and I think I probably questioned his ancestry, which did not calm him down any," said Bobby Allison. "He had his helmet in his hand and lunged at me and hit me in the face with his helmet. It cut my lip and bloodied my nose."
Stunned, Bobby Allison unbuckled himself from his car. "I said, 'I've got to get out and address this right now or run from him the rest of my life.' None of us wanted to run from each other," he said. "We were out there doing our deal, but we were proud of what we'd done and we also had that cockiness that it takes to be a competitor in any competitive activity.
"So, I got out of the car and the guy started beatin' on my fist with his nose. That's my story and I'm sticking to it."
Yarborough, a four-time winner of the 500 (1968, 1977, 1983-84), remembered how he got bogged down in the mud near Turn 1 and lost three laps. "I came back during the race and made all three of them up," he said. "Then it came to the last lap, and that's history. You've seen it a thousand times."
"That was huge," Joy said. "That was the biggest blip in viewership that NASCAR has ever had before or since. The whole East Coast was blanketed [by snow] and everybody had nothing else to do and there was not another live sports event on TV at the time and it was, 'OK, let's watch the race,' and, 'Oh, my!' They were off and running."
The Daytona 500, with all its drama, made for great television.
Tough to forget
Almost everyone remembers 1988, when Bobby Allison led his son, Davey, across the finish line in the first father-son 1-2 finish in race history. Almost everyone, that is, except Bobby Allison."I should be able to tell you all about 1988," said Bobby Allison, who was robbed of that memory four months later when he suffered a head injury in a wall crash at Pocono, Pa. "I was 50 years old [the oldest winner in race history] and won the Super Bowl of auto racing for the third time in my career with the best young man in racing second to me. How can anything be better than that?
"But I do not remember Daytona 1988 at all. That's something I've had to accept."
Then there was 1993. Winless in the Daytona 500, CBS analyst Ned Jarrett coached his son, Dale, over the air as he waged a last-lap duel against Earnhardt, and brought him home to the first of his three Daytona 500 triumphs.
"As the cars went into Turn 1, Bob Stenner, our producer, hit the all-call [button] to all of us in the pits, the booth, everywhere, and said, 'Everybody lay out. Ned, be a dad. Bring your boy home,' " Joy recalled. "Ned said that's the one moment of his whole career, racing or broadcasting, that everybody asks about. That day, every father in America was with Ned Jarrett, with that sense of pride. Not only had his son won the big race, but he won the one big prize in racing that Ned never won."
When Earnhardt finally won the Daytona 500 in 1998, everyone was riveted to their seats.
"It was one of those deals when you've been close so many times, heck, he'd won everything here you could win," said car owner Richard Childress, who made a return trip to Victory Lane last year when Kevin Harvick outdueled Mark Martin in a race for the ages. "And then to finally be able to put that 500 together, it was just unbelievable."
Crew members queued up on pit road in what Joy termed "the world's longest receiving line" to congratulate Earnhardt.
"That just had to be an awesome feeling for him," said Earnhardt Jr., who had a concussion and watched on TV. "It had to be an amazing feeling for him because he tried so hard. He had to know that the times and the opportunities were running out and getting slim, so the urgency had to be peaked. It had to be crazy emotionally for him. I didn't get a chance to be there and I was pretty upset about that, but such is life."
Michael Waltrip's first Daytona win, in 2001, was dwarfed by the death of his car owner, Earnhardt.
"I remember reflecting on Sunday morning, 'You can win this race today,' " Waltrip said. "Looking in my mirror toward the end of the race and seeing Dale Jr. and Dale behind me was a perfect, perfect situation [for DEI] until that last corner when he crashed, then it wasn't so perfect."
Waltrip, though, seemed reconciled with the anguish he felt over Earnhardt's death on what should have been one of the happiest days of his career. "When he left this earth, I was winning," Waltrip said. "And I know it made him smile."
Daytona 500
What: NASCAR's season-opening race
When: Tomorrow
Where: Daytona International Speedway, Daytona Beach, Fla.
TV: Ch. 25, 3:30 p.m.
Michael Vega can be reached at vega@globe.com.
