Daytona 500 champions eagerly share memories (cont'd)

On driving for the Wood Brothers:

"I could only run just a few races, because of Indy cars but the funniest thing was in Ontario, Calif. It was one of the biggest races and paid $150 lap money. Cale [Yarborough] got hurt and I was just healing up and couldn't go to Japan and race so I said yeah I'm well enough.

"We sit on the pole with the Wood Brothers and set the track record. It must have been halfway and I said man I think I've got a bad vibration. I told Glenn or Leonard [Wood], one of them. They said you know this pays $150 lap money and you're leading. I said: The vibration just left! I never came in, I said hell no ... with that kind of money I ain't feeling nothing.

"My life has gone by so fast and I've gotten so old. Anytime you're having fun, time flies by. Back in my years, we had so much more fun than the boys do today, because you made good money if you won, but more than that, you always tried to help each other. It ain't like it used to be."

Buddy Baker opened the decadent decade of the 1980s with his Daytona 500 win after 18 frustrating tries and still today struggles to find the words to describe the experience. (Oh, and did he mention the speeding ticket on the way home? Make sense, his No. 28 Grey Ghost holds the record for the fastest Daytona 500):

"I have tried every way in the world. 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 emotion was to a point where you almost felt nauseous.

"The night of the race I went to bed, I had to drive home because I had to be in Richmond in a couple of days. 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 a.m., and the fuzz-buster looked like it was dancing on the dash. Then I said 'oh no' and looked at the speedometer and I went 'Holy jeez.' I pulled over and the [officer 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 just spent the whole day running 200 miles per hour. We talked for 15 to 20 minutes afterward. I was so excited and happy that [the ticket] didn't even bother me. So that was a cap for a wonderful day -- you won the Daytona 500 and a speeding ticket in the middle of the night.

"It took me 18 years to win and Dale [Earnhardt] 19. It gets to the point where you doubt yourself. 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.

Bill Elliott, a two-time winner -- in 1985 and '87 -- holds the qualifying record with a speed of 210.364 mph and is still at it after all these years proving age is just a number when it comes to NASCAR drivers.

"Back in that era, Ford came out with a T-bird in that particular shape, in the early 1980s. 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 kind of lined up and everything worked. We had a lot of good luck. 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.

"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.

"I will say I think the thing that I'm really most thankful for in this sport, over the years, is safety. I've always been an advocate of making things safer for the drivers."

Bobby Allison, who won in '78 and '82, also won the first Daytona 500 where restrictor plates where mandated in 1988 because NASCAR felt the speeds were getting too high at some of the superspeedways; evident by Allison's crash at Talladega in '87.

"The first time I saw (Daytona International Speedway) 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.

"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 whether or not the wins mean more today than they did decades ago:

"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."

Darrell Waltrip, known for his quick wit and outspokenness, won the Daytona the following year in 1989. He retired in 2000 and became a NASCAR television analyst with FOX and changed the broadcasting decade with his personality.

"Nothing has changed much at the track. You still got the car, still got the crew chief and you've got the people that work on the car at the track, but back at the shop you've got 400 employees now. The number of people involved and the number of people that follow the sport daily, newspapers, magazine, so many folks want a little piece of what we are doing.

"I like the simplicity of what we used to do. I liked it when it was simple, when we showed up and all we worried about was the green-white-checkered ... and now all these politics and inspections ... Daytona was really the only place where we came and worried about going through tech, the room of doom. We brought everything down here we knew to do a car hoping we could get half of it approved. We knew we were going to lose some things when we came here. The fun factor has been almost eliminated. I like the glamour though. When people say 'Are you here with the show,' I say, 'No, man, I am the show.' "

Dale Earnhardt Jr. was the 2004 Daytona 500 champ and he got the job done after his fifth try, while it took his late father 19 years. The race is easily one of the most memorable NASCAR victories in recent history:

"Really the only feeling I had emotionally, was relief.

"I'm pretty honored to be in that group and to have won this race and to be able to share the stage 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.

"[In 1985] 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 ... 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."