RacingNation.com
Home / NASCAR / A gathering of Daytona 500 winners

A gathering of Daytona 500 winners

Richmond, Va. – Richard Petty, Leonard Wood, Richard Childress and Larry McClure have combined for 20 Daytona 500 triumphs, and the famous quartet came together in Richmond as part of a series of events leading up to the 50th running of the ?Great American Race? at the Daytona International Speedway in February, 2008.

?Winning the Daytona 500 is a big deal, a huge deal,? said Petty. ?If you win Daytona, you are a winner for the rest of the year. We never came to Daytona with any thought other than that of winning the race. Our only question would be who would finish second. Of my seven wins, three of them I lucked into but there were probably three others that got away from us.?

Added McClure, ?When we won for the first time with Ernie Irvan, it was only our second win. We passed Earnhardt and although it was not a popular win, it was tremendous for us.? His team also won twice with Sterling Marlin and his winning car emitted an unusual sound that spooked the other competitors. The owner said the newly developed exhaust system didn?t yield additional power but it gave his team a psychological advantage. ?The system was called Dr. Gas and it sounded like an Indy car to us.?

Childress admitted that winning Daytona with Earnhardt was a huge thrill for him. ?We had been together for 20 years and had been friends longer than that, and to see his face and hear his voice after the win made it very special. After so many near misses, fortune finally smiled on us.?

While Earnhardt and Childress were very close, Childress indicated it is much harder to have the same relationship with today?s drivers due to the commitments imposed on drivers. He was comparing his relationship with Earnhardt to that of Kevin Harvick, who won Daytona for Childress in 2007.

Leonard Wood and his family won Daytona four times with Cale Yarborough, Tiny Lund, David Pearson and A. J. Foyt. He, too, indicated that winning the famed race is very exciting. The Virginia native said Lund?s victory stands out as being very special, as Lund had been a substitute for Marvin Panch, who had been injured in a sports car. Lund moved into the driver?s seat after helping remove Panch from his overturned and burning car.

As the date for the golden anniversary edition of the Daytona 500 approaches, other events and themes are planned to boost the excitement for the famous race.

Share Button