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FUNNY SPORTS QUOTES \ Source: enquirer.com

Past Daytona winners swap stories, fibs

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. - Sometimes, what they call bench racing is the best racing of all.

When the bench racing is being done by past champions of the Daytona 500, it's even better. And there was much bench racing to be had Friday.

Past winners from Marvin Panch (1961) to A.J. Foyt (1972) to Darrell Waltrip (1989) to The King, seven-time champion Richard Petty, swapped stories - and perhaps more than a few lies - to much laughter and warm moments.

There was three-time winner Bobby Allison (1978, 1982, 1988) telling the story of his '82 triumph.

"We fixed our bumper so it would fly off, or so I'm told," he said. "I won the Clash with the bumper like it was, and I won the 125 with the bumper like it was."

Allison said a NASCAR official, insisting the team was cheating, mandated a 1/8-inch adjustment to the bumper before the 500. It was removed and re-welded, albeit less effectively. Allison then tangled with Cale Yarborough and, lo and behold, the bumper fell off, giving him what many felt was an unfair aerodynamic advantage.

"It's my lie and I'm sticking to it," Petty, who finished 27th that year, replied to Allison to much laughter.

And then there was Petty adding levity to one of his darker moments - 1988 - when his Pontiac went flipping and tumbling down the frontstretch in as frightening a wreck as has ever been seen at the big track.

"I was lying there looking up at the ceiling," he said, recounting his now famous - or infamous - encounter with his wife Lynda in the infield care center.

"All she's seen what was on TV ... and she come in the door and she looked down and said, 'Are we having fun?' ''

Speaking of 1988, there were Allison's poignant moments discussing that race, when he beat son Davey in a 1-2 finish, a day he cannot remember - even after watching it on tape - due to injuries he suffered in a bad wreck at Pocono four months later.

And then there was Panch telling the story of the car he drove to victory that was basically rescued from the back lot at Smokey Yunick's legendary Daytona Beach garage. The car, a 1960 Pontiac, was held in such low esteem, Yunick wouldn't even allow his crew work to on it inside the garage, where Fireball Roberts' 1961 Pontiac was being prepared for the 500.

Or Panch recounting his first visit, the inaugural 1959 race, when NASCAR and Daytona 500 founder Bill France offered drivers $1,000 - a lot of money back then - to cut the tops off their cars to create convertibles to boost the numbers in that underepresented class.

Panch took the money and then regretted it as the hardtops blew by the convertibles on the track, and the cover inside his car blew off.

"We had to hold it down because it was beating you to death in there, and driving with one arm and watching the mirror at the same time, that was the biggest mistake I ever made," he said.

Panch finished 17th in the 59-car field, but two years later scored the victory that guaranteed his membership in one of the most exclusive fraternities in all of sport.

But before a driver can win it, he's got to get in it, and that's special in itself.

Just ask Dale Eanhardt Jr.

"You do anything in the world just to get in the Daytona 500," he said. "Once you're in the race, there's no feeling like it. It's just a crazy feeling to be in that field, let alone win the race. It's an incredible feeling."

It's a feeling that lasts a lifetime, even when a lifetime progresses to the point where the only racing a racer does is on a bench.

And as they say, bench racing can be the best racing of all.

 

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