Daytona 500 Champions Media Day Highlights

Bill Elliott, two-time ('85, '87) Daytona 500 winner

ON THE STRENGTH OF HIS CARS THE YEARS HE WON THE 500
"Back in that era, Ford came out with a T-bird in that particular shape in the early ‘80s. It was a car that we refined. To come here and win in '85, we kept refining the car and getting better. My brother (Ernie) had really good power in the engine at that point. So, between all the stuff that came together, it's just like that old saying, all the stars kinda lined up and everything worked. We had a lot of good luck. Coming back, we had good durability in the engine and we were able to keep the car together for the full 500 miles. We came here and won in '85 and then backed it up in '87, so in the unrestricted stuff, we had some really good speeds."

ON HIS QUALIFYING LAP OF 210.364 MPH IN 1987
"I felt like when I left pit road that I wasn't going to come back. We had a heck of a racecar and everything back then was on the ragged edge – we didn't have radial tires. The generation of cars at that time was so much different than what they have today. It's just a whole different evolution. As time goes on and things change – we had good stuff for that evolution, and then somebody else came along and did something else and another and another and it always seems to change as time goes on.

"We were on the edge (that lap). Even when you run 85 mph around here, it's on the edge."

ON HIS MOST MEMORABLE DAYTONA 500 MOMENT
"Early on, when I first came down here just to come and run Daytona, it was a big deal. The first (race) I made, I came down in 1976 for the Fourth of July races and ran Bill Champion's car and I think we ended up 19th. It was like, ‘Wow, I've never seen anything like this.' It was totally incredible. I had never seen it before. The only thing I had done was I came by when I was a really small kid and just looked at the place, but to come here and drive, it was like, ‘Wow, this is big.'

Dale Jarrett, three-time ('93, '96, '00) Daytona 500 winner

ON HIS MOST MEMORABLE DAYTONA 500 MOMENT

"In 1976, with Petty and Pearson coming off of (Turn) 4, that's the number one for me. They don't get any more exciting than that. The top two drivers – that was just incredible. To have that finish. It was just a great racing moment to me. That's what the Daytona 500 is about – doing everything that you can to win and having it come down to literally the last 300 yards of the race with two drivers that have won this race multiple times, and it was just an incredible finish."

ON THE DAYTONA 500 50TH RUNNING
"I think it's a good thing. First and foremost, in this sport you're always looking for an avenue to help market the sport and a particular event. With this being our biggest event, this is a big year. A lot has happened in those 49 previous races and if what I understand is going to happen with all of this happens, it's a great marketing tool and a great opportunity now for these next six months before the race to honor some of these guys that maybe a lot of people have not paid attention to recently. These are people that helped make our sport. When we get back to David Pearson, Richard Petty, Junior Johnson, AJ Foyt, Mario Andretti, these are people who helped mold what we have today and I think this is more for those gentlemen than it is for anyone else and I think it's very fitting that NASCAR and Daytona (International Speedway) are taking the time to do this."

Kevin Harvick, defending Daytona 500 champion

ON BEING A PART OF THE 50TH RUNNING FESTIVITIES WITH THE LEGENDS OF OUR SPORT
"As a race fan, any time you can be around Mario Andretti, AJ Foyt, Dale Jarrett and Dale (Earnhardt), Jr., all the different eras of the sport, I think that's pretty neat and to be a part of that is pretty cool to just be in the group. To win the Daytona 500 is just something that is really special and a really big thing to be a part of and something that I'm glad we got to experience."

ON WHERE HE KEEPS HIS HARLEY J. EARL TROPHY
"It's in my trophy case at home – front and center"

Pete Hamilton, 1970 Daytona 500 champion

ON WHAT IT'S LIKE TO COME BACK TO DAYTONA
"It's really fun to come here and to see the race track. Probably the biggest difference to my wife and I when we see this race track is the grandstand on the backstretch – it makes this race track feel like a mile-and-a-half track. When there was almost nothing in the infield, particularly when you tested out here, you could go down the front stretch and see in the backstretch and it made Daytona seem a lot bigger. I am sincerely glad that the track itself is just like it was when we raced. They put a couple coats of asphalt on it, but (the current drivers) still gotta sit there and run for three-and-a-half to four hours and that's a good feeling that they're doing the same kind of thing that we did."

ON THE 50TH RUNNING FESTIVITIES AND GETTING TO SEE EVERYONE
"That's probably the best part – seeing the old guys that we raced and endured whatever the problems were way back then. There are difficult situations today and there were difficult ones back then and so we all worked through that and it's really fun to see these old guys. A lot of them I've seen the last couple years – they had a couple of different old-timer events and that was fun to be involved with. It's good to see them and you mix in a couple of new guys too. I was kind of surprised to see that Sterling Marlin is 50 (years old). I remember his daddy Coo Coo Marlin and we did a lot of racing together and had a lot of fun together. So, time goes on."

Buddy Baker, 1980 Daytona 500 champion

ON IF HE COULD PUT INTO WORDS WHAT FINALLY WINNING THE DAYTONA 500 MEANT TO HIM
"I wish I could. I have tried every way in the world. I do a lot of after-dinner speaking and I have my own satellite show, and that question is impossible for a racecar driver to answer. It is exhilaration, it's, ‘OK, you've won the biggest race that we have in NASCAR', the years of frustration waiting to get into that spot and it finally happening – the emotion was to a point where you almost felt nauseous. It's hard to explain. The first thing you do is you yell like somebody hears you – you're in a 750 horsepower car and you yell like a little boy and then you go, ‘Why'd you do that? There's not one person on earth who heard that,' but I did and that was worth it. Then you go down the back straightaway and you go, ‘Holy mackerel, where do you go from here?'

"The night of the race I went to bed – I didn't even go to a party or anything – I have to drive home because I had to be in Richmond in a couple of days, so I go to bed and after two hours, my eyes are still wide open so I said, ‘You might as well get up and go home.' So, I packed up everything and took off and just as I entered the wonderful state of Georgia, I topped a hill. Nobody on the road, 2:30 in the morning, I topped a hill and the fuzzbuster looked like it was dancing on the dash and I went, ‘Oh, no' and I looked at the speedometer and I went, ‘Holy, jeez.' So, I pulled over and the guy came up and he said, ‘Buddy Baker! I can't believe it. I am such a fan of yours, but you have the worst luck, and this is one of those times.' I was sitting there thinking about the Daytona 500 and what it meant and there was no speed. I just spent the whole day running 200 miles per hour – I can tell you it wasn't anywhere close to that. We talked for 15-20 minutes afterward. I was so excited and happy that it didn't even bother me. So you got a speeding ticket, you won the Daytona 500 too. So that was a cap for a wonderful day – a speeding ticket in the middle of the night."

ON HIS MOST MEMORABLE DAYTONA 500
"Nothing compares to winning the Daytona 500, but some of the times that you thought you had it won. That flat tire that time when I was driving for Harry Hyde – you go out there and somebody comes from half a lap back. The right front (tire) is slappin' and you're going, ‘Don't come apart. Just stay on the rim and don't knock the fender off. Wait a minute, you can't make two laps with a flat tire.' About that time the tire comes apart and you see a dot in the mirror, then the dot becomes a front end, and then you see the whole car and then (it passes you) and all your dreams of winning the Daytona 500 are gone. That hurts. You remember that about as much as winning – but not quite."

ON SYMPATHIZING WITH DALE EARNHARDT, SR ON HOW LONG IT TOOK HIM TO WIN THE DAYTONA 500
"It took me 18 years to win and (Dale) 19. It got to the point – what else could he have done. The only thing he could have done to cap what he had done at Daytona would be buy the speedway. I think he won like 30 or something races in everything – IROC, you name it. Earnhardt was kinda like me, I think he won the Daytona 500 five or six times and had problems. It gets to the point where you doubt yourself. I'd win everything else and Earnhardt had already gotten to the point where he said, ‘You know, it's not everything if you don't win the Daytona 500.' I think his face told the whole story after he won. I thought they were going to have to take a baseball bat and knock him off the top of the car because he stayed up there for about thirty minutes and I know the feeling. You're kinda in disbelief even when you go in (to Victory Lane). You think, am I going to wake up and it not be the truth? In my case, it was 18 years of frustration having the race won so many times, but then again, a whole lot of people have never won here and you have to take that into consideration too.

ON SEEING ALL THE OTHER DAYTONA 500 WINNERS
"It's good to see all these guys. Junior Johnson was the first guy to really feel the draft here and find out what it was all about. Everybody said I'm the king of the draft and I said, ‘no, I just found out how to make it work.' I think all of us never worried about whether you were the fastest car here or not, but whether you were willing to take the chances and race traffic. That makes a difference between a great driver here and an average driver."

"If you want to look around at the people that are sitting here – I don't see a fluke, not one. AJ Foyt, one of the greatest drivers to ever live right there, Mario Andretti the same way – put them in anything and they were great drivers. I'm honored to be here and I know what it means. This is the one that I thought, well, ‘You've won four times at Charlotte, you won four times at Talladega, a couple at Carolina, a couple at Darlington, then Daytona – I haven't won anything there yet. Then when you win. The last race that I ever won on a major speedway was right here. Just the memories of the people that make it happen for you. No driver wins a race. Without the right stuff, the right cars and the right people behind you and enough money to make it happen – you don't luck into these situations, you have to work your way into them. I left a race team where I loved the guy that I drove for. We were best friends and he had all the money in the world and offered me things that just were unreal to stay and race for him and I couldn't win the Daytona 500 if I stayed there. I made that decision to leave a race team that I could have raced with until now and I would still have a good race team, but to win the Daytona 500 had become an obsession with me. It just had to be. I would have probably done anything to get into that racecar at that particular time and it paid off and as soon as I won the Daytona 500 I wished I could go back to where I was but they had gotten some mediocre driver like Cale Yarborough to step-in."

ON HIS REACTION THE FIRST TIME HE SAW DAYTONA INTERNATIONAL SPEEDWAY
"I was here with my dad the first time we ever had a race here. We put a gear in the car – that's when I worked with him on the car – and we had no idea; nobody had seen anything this big. We put the gear in the car, went out and came right back in and I asked him what was wrong and he said, ‘I was at top RPM when I got to the end of the pit wall right here.' We had a gear in there like you'd run at a quarter-mile race track somewhere. So we went trying to find gears. We even had the front end up instead of down. Smokey Yunick and Fireball Roberts came in here (the next year) and they had their Pontiac jacked up with the backend up in the air and the nose on the ground. I looked at that and I said, ‘that's the silliest looking thing I've ever seen.' He went out there and ran about seven or eight miles per hour faster than everybody else and we spent the rest of that next day at the machine shops getting things to put our springs up on. There wasn't a car here that didn't look just like that after the third day."

Dale Earnhardt, Jr., 2004 Daytona 500 champion

ON BEING WITH ALL THE LEGENDS OF THE SPORT DURING THE DAYTONA 500 50TH ANNIVERSARY FESTIVITIES
"I'm pretty honored to be in that group and to have won this race and to be able to share the stage over there (when we were taking pictures) with some of the guys that were on it. I was glad that they all came and that they took the time out of their schedules to be here and to make this as big as they can make it. There's some big talent up there; it's pretty impressive.

ON IF IT WAS A RELIEF TO WIN THE DAYTONA 500 ON HIS FIFTH TRY AFTER IT TOOK SOME OF THE GREATEST DRIVERS SO LONG TO WIN
"That was really the only feeling I had emotionally, was relief."

ON HIS RECOLLECTION OF DAYTONA INTERNATIONAL SPEEDWAY AS A KID
"I was watching a race down in the old scoring stand – it used to be where the kids and the moms use to go – down toward Turn 1. It was 1985 and daddy blew a right front tire going into (Turn) 1 and he was sliding along the wall, the car was tore up in the front and I just remember seeing that. Greg Sacks won the race – it was the Firecracker 400.

Marvin Panch, 1961 Daytona 500 champion

ON WHAT IT'S LIKE TO SEE ALL THE GENERATIONS OF DAYTONA 500 WINNERS
"It's great. It's good to see all the guys that I used to run with and the new drivers.  A lot of them I didn't know – I know who they are, but they don't know who I am. This is a good deal. The track putting all this together has been super. There's more of us around than I thought. I didn't realize that there was that many of those drivers still around."

ON BUYING A HOUSE IN DAYTONA BEACH WITH HIS WINNINGS FROM THE DAYTONA 500
"I bought a farm. We still have it. My daughter lives on it now and if I'm nice to her she'll let me park my motor home out there. I come down in the winter time and I go to North Carolina in the summertime."

ON WHERE HE HAS HIS DAYTONA 500 TROPHY
"I still have the big trophy. It's in (my daughter's) little museum that she's got out at the house."

A.J. Foyt, 1972 Daytona 500 champion

ON WHAT IT'S LIKE TO BE BACK AT DAYTONA AND AROUND ALL THE GENERATIONS OF DAYTONA 500 CHAMPIONS
"It's always great to come to Daytona – we were here in February to test here. I had a lot of fun through the years down here and spent a lot of time down here and raced a lot of races down here."

ON THE HEADLINES OF THE NEWSPAPER, THE MORNING HE WON THE DAYTONA 500, SAYING ‘AJ SAYS HE'LL WIN DAYTONA 500'
"The Wood Brothers were such great people to work with and they made sure everything was 100 percent, but you still have to have that little lady luck on your side. I've always felt like you make your own luck, but still it's got to fall your way."

ON HOW THE DAYTONA 500 COMPARES TO ALL THE OTHER RACES HE'S RACED AROUND THE WORLD
"Everybody in the world knows the Kentucky Derby and the Indy 500 and they know the Daytona 500, so it's good to have your name amongst all the greats that have won the race because it's very good."

Bobby Allison, three-time ('78, '82, '88) Daytona 500 champion

ON HIS REACTION TO THE TRACK THE FIRST TIME HE SAW IT
"The first time I saw it I was in Miami racing a modified car and dragging it around the country and I came here to look at this place under construction and I said, ‘Wow. Wow. How are we going to get a race car all the way to that other corner down there?' Then in 1960 I came here with a modified and really struggled with that, but at least got out on the race track and ran some laps. Then I came back here in '61 with a 1960 Chevy from the year before – it had been a Grand National the year before, the Cup cars from those days. A lot of cars started to race, more than the 43 that race today. I started 39th and finished 39th still running. Pretty impressive, but I did it."

ON SOME OF THE OTHER DRIVERS SAYING THAT THEY WERE SCARED RUNNING OPEN THE FIRST TIME THEY DROVE HERE
"I thought (racing wide-open) was neat. In fact, I made it around here wide-open throttle during the tests, probably the first of anybody."

ON HAVING WON THE DAYTONA 500 THREE TIMES WHEN IT HAS TAKEN PEOPLE YEARS TO WIN ONE IF AT ALL
"It was just so neat. I wanted to do it so bad. I was so committed and I think I should have won it 15 times. Go back and go as hard as you can again."

ON IF THE WINS MEAN EVEN MORE NOW THAN THEY DID AT THE TIME
"It keeps growing because the event keeps growing. There will be people that will stay up all night Saturday night to watch (the Daytona 500) on satellite TV around the world. (My wife) Judy and I went to Spain and Italy on a goodwill tour for the Navy and we were in a restaurant in a hotel in Madrid and a man asked for my autograph.  What a complement for somebody to come up and be all enthused about NASCAR racing in Madrid, Spain."

Jeff Gordon, three-time ('97, '99, 05) Daytona 500 champion

ON WHEN HE REALIZED THE IMPORTANCE OF THE DAYTONA 500
"As I was growing up and learning more about racing all around the country, I realized how popular NASCAR was. It was something that I had never tried before and that it was something I thought I should pursue. Fortunately for me, it became a part of my life. The first time I drove a stockcar it was awesome, I loved it. The competition was great, the racing was great and it seemed to fit more with what I had been doing throughout my whole career to that point and it was all about Daytona from that point on."

ON IF WINNING THE DAYTONA 500 IS LESS SPECIAL THE MORE YOU WIN IT
"It's probably even more special. I'll never forget the very first Daytona 500 I ever ran in. That was very special to be up front racing with Dale Earnhardt and Dale Jarrett and Geoff Bodine and guys like that. It was a really special moment for me. Getting that first Daytona 500 win, I think I was just overwhelmed and blown away by the whole thing. Winning it a few years, the 500 had grown in popularity, the sport had grown, and to me it was a moment that I'll cherish forever and never forget. I think, just like championships, it only gets better each time."

ON WHICH OF HIS WINS WAS MOST SPECIAL
"The Hendrick 1-2-3 (in 1997) was a really special one. It was very cool. (Rick Hendrick) was really battling with his illness at that time and you know that that put a big smile on his face and that wasn't easy to do in those days. For me personally, I think the last Daytona 500 win I had – just everything about the sport had grown to another level and when you pull into Victory Lane, you recognize how recognized that race is and that winner is and how special it is to be there and to be sitting in Victory Lane. It was, to me, just a very rewarding moment to go that many years in this sport and to be able to get a third Daytona 500 is pretty special."

ON WHICH OF THE PAST DAYTONA 500 CHAMPIONS HE WOULD LIKE TO GO HEAD-TO-HEAD WITH
"All of them. These guys are awesome. If I look back, obviously with Richard Petty having seven Daytona 500s, obviously he knew how to get around this place and you want to race with the best. I got a chance to race with Dale Earnhardt and he was the best that I ever got to see. Between (David) Pearson and (Cale) Yarborough and Petty and (Bobby and Donnie) Allison – the list just goes on and on – I would say that those guys were consistently the best."

HIS MEMORIES OF THE FIRST TIME HE CAME TO DAYTONA AND IF HE WAS AS NERVOUS AS SOME OF THE OTHER DRIVERS WERE TO RUN WIDE OPEN
"I was a little bit nervous because they did say that they were going to run wide-open and I was in a Busch car during a test and they said just build up speed, take a few laps, just go with whatever's comfortable to you. About the second or third lap, I said, ‘Alright, I'm going to go wide-open now. I got a pretty good feel for it.' I went to push the peddle and I was already wide-open. The cars were working pretty good, when I came into the sport they were stuck to the racetrack pretty good. It wasn't like some of these guys, back when they were unrestricted, doing over 200 mph at this track for the first time, that probably was an eye-opening experience."

ON BEING A PART OF THE ELITE GROUP OF DRIVERS TO WIN THE DAYTONA 500
"It's extremely rewarding. It's extremely special. The more years I spend in this sport, the more I realize that those names are synonymous with its history and what's made this sport what it is and what's made the Daytona 500 what it is. To think that my name is going to go on that list because I've won it three times, it's awesome. It's really hard to put it into perspective. I don't think I really ever will fully appreciate it until I'm no longer a full-time driver on the Series. I think when I look back on my accomplishments in this sport and how the sport's grown and the people that helped to get it where it is, I think right now I just go week-to-week, day-to-day, my head spinning off my body because it's such a fast pace that we have to run to take care of testing, races, sponsorship, all those things. It's hard to step back and take a breath and think of everything that goes on, and has gone on, in my career to get to this point and where I stack up and who my name's going to be listed next to."

ON WHICH DAYTONA 500, OTHER THAN THE RACES HE WON, WAS THE MOST MEMORABLE
"The first one. The first year that I came here in the Cup car. We won the (Gatorade) 125 as a rookie, we were battling up front there with Dale Earnhardt at the end of the race and I just remember it being a very surreal moment where five or ten (laps) to go and I was running somewhere in the top-five and I was looking around going, ‘Oh my God, I can't believe that I'm part of this right now.' At the time I was like, ‘I might have a shot to win this thing, even though realistically I never had a shot at winning it, but I was just happy just to be there in that lead group, going to the finish, watching them battle it out was pretty cool."

ON DALE JARRETT SAYING THAT HE WAS GOING TO GO WITH JEFF AT THE END OF THAT RACE IF HE HAD TRIED TO MAKE A RUN
"I wish I had known that prior to it. I was being taught so many lessons at that moment that I just didn't have enough experience to know what to do. I thought, ‘Hey, here's Dale Earnhardt in front of me and I can't go wrong if I go with him.' It didn't work out for me, but I stuck with him and I still finished fifth. Either way I was going to be happy."