Daytona's "Flash" Gordon

  LAST IN A FIVE-PART SERIES ON FEBRUARY RACING DECADE-TO-DECADE AT DAYTONA BEACH, FLA.

    Perhaps stock car racing hall-of-famer Buddy Baker put it best.

   "In my opinion a NASCAR driver can't consider his career complete unless he wins both the Southern 500 at Darlington and the Daytona 500," Baker said a few years ago.

   If this is true, Baker completed his career by taking the 500 at Florida's Daytona International Speedway in 1980.  He triumphed in the Darlington Raceway classic in South Carolina 10 years earlier.

   Since the Southern 500 sadly no longer exists, present-day and future drivers seemingly are going to have incomplete careers.  But Darlington still has a spring 500-miler, so maybe that should count.  It remains, after all, the same tough old speedway.

   Whatever, to Baker's thinking, Jeff Gordon completed his still on-going career on Feb. 16, 1997 by capturing a dramatic, crash-filled Daytona 500.  He previously had begun a rash of five Southern 500 victories in 1995.    

  To win the first of his three Daytona 500s, Gordon had to outduel two of NASCAR's biggest, most popular stars--the late Dale Earnhardt and Bill Elliott.

  Gordon and Earnhardt tangled on the 189th of the race's 200 laps on the fast, famous 2.5-mile Daytona track.

   Here's how The Charlotte Observer's David Poole described it:

   "Coming out of Turn 2...Gordon tried to get by Earnhardt for second (behind leader Elliott).  Earnhardt was crowded toward the outside wall.  His Chevrolet scuffed the wall, bounced off, was tapped from behind by Dale Jarrett's Ford and then went tumbling down the backstretch.  (Ernie) Irvan's car clipped Earnhardt's, sending Irvan's hood flying into the grandstand, slightly injuring two spectators.

   "'Jarrett and Ernie were pushing me hard,'" said Gordon.  "'I closed up on Earnhardt and had to squeeze out of the gas to keep from hitting him in the middle of the corner.  I saw that he was pushing, and I saw him have to get out of the gas.  I was like, 'Ohh, this is going to be close.'  He hit the wall, bounced off and hit me in the door.

   "'I was trying to win the Daytona 500, the biggest race I know of.  I think Dale would have done anything he could to win the 500.  What I did didn't cause him to wreck.  What I did caused him to have to lift off the gas.'"

   Earnhardt crawled from his  crashed car and got in an ambulance for the required ride to the speedway's infield infirmary.  Then he noticed his car had landed on its wheels.  He jumped from the ambulance and got back in the car.  Incredibly, it cranked.  Earnhardt drove to the pits and although his chance to win was gone, he continued in the race.

   Next for Gordon came Elliott, who was leading in a Ford on Lap 194 when the 500 restarted.

   Lined up in order behind Elliott were Gordon and his Hendrick Motorsports teammates, Terry Labonte and Ricky Craven.

   "I was history and I knew it," Elliott said after the race.  "I was a sitting duck there at the end.  With three Hendrick cars behind you, you ain't got a chance.  I was dead meat and I knew it.  It was just a matter of where and when."

   On Lap 195 Gordon went so low in the trioval in front of the main grandstand that David Poole observed "he could smell the burgers frying in the infield."  The move enabled Gordon to flash by Elliott.  Labonte and Craven went high and got around Elliott, too.

   These moves essentially ended the racing, as a 10-car crash on Lap 196 forced a finish under the caution flag.   

    Gordon and his crew led by Ray Evernham understandably were ecstatic in Victory lane.  Later, Gordon candidly conceded, "I really never saw myself winning the Daytona 500."

   Later still, Gordon chuckled and added, "After the checkered flag I saw this mangled, black No. 3 (Earnhardt's car) coming up behind me and I though, 'Uh oh!' But Dale pulled up beside me and gave me a thumbs-up sign.  I knew then he understood I was just trying to do the same thing he was trying to do, win the Daytona 500."

   Gordon's triumph made him the youngest Daytona 500 winner in history at 25 years, six months and 12 days in only his sixth start in the race.  Richard Petty was 26 when he won NASCAR's foremost event in 1964.

   In 1998, in his 20th try, Earnhardt finally won the 500, too, completing his career, in the estimation of Buddy Baker, who won at Daytona in his 19th February try.  Earnhardt first won the Southern 500 in 1987.

   Earnhardt, a seven-time champion at NASCAR's top level along with Petty,  lost his life at Daytona in 2001 in a last-lap crash in the 500.

   Gordon, who has four titles in a continuing pursuit of Earnhardt and Petty, remains among the sport's elite.  He rates among the favorites to win this year's season-opening Daytona 500 on Feb. 18.