Daytona 500 winners don’t always reach superstardom

From The Associated Press

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Derrike Cope gingerly pulled himself out of his No. 75 Dodge following qualifying for the Daytona 500 last Sunday and waved to the handful of fans standing along a fence just outside pit road.

“Derrike, can I have your shoes?” asked a pretty blonde, one of her hands on the chain-link fence, the other pointing at Cope’s blue racing shoes.

Cope just smiled and waved, told her “I need’em” and turned to talk to members of his crew after a disappointing qualifying run around the most famous 2.5-mile tri-oval in auto racing.

Even now, nearly 20 years after the biggest victory of his career in the 1990 Daytona 500, it never gets old.

Sure, Cope would like to be known for more than being in the right place at the right time when Dale Earnhardt Sr. sliced a tire in turn three on the last lap of that year’s 500, clearing the way for Cope’s improbable win.

Lucky winners

Cope’s story is hardly unique. For every Richard Petty or Jimmie Johnson — drivers who vaulted to superstardom after winning the 500 — there is a Cope or a Ward Burton, blue-collar guys who were thrust briefly into the spotlight thanks to some hard work and a little racing luck.

Burton came from nowhere to win the 2002 race for Bill Davis Racing when Sterling Marlin hopped out to fix a busted fender while the race was halted by a red flag. The illegal move sent Marlin to be the back of the pack and opened the door for the defining moment of Burton’s moderately successful career.

Seven years later he’s out of Sprint Cup, opting instead to spend most of his time in his native Virginia monitoring the blossoming career of son Jeb and working for the Ward Burton Wildlife Foundation.

It wasn’t quite the future he envisioned after winning the biggest race of his life. But Burton faded to 25th in the points in 2002 as Bill Davis’ small operation failed to keep up with the warp-speed technological advances that were changing the sport on a weekly basis.

Winning the 500 opened the doors for Burton to move on to bigger teams with deeper pockets, but he opted to stay with the Bill Davis. Looking back, he admits it may have not been the smartest business move.

“I don’t know if I regret it,” he said. “But I was never in a situation to be in a multicar team with the resources to be one of the top dogs every week.”