Is the Daytona 500 still special? Drivers have their say

Ryan Blaney hardly needed time to think before responding.

“Oh yeah,” he said when asked if the Daytona 500 was still a prestigious event.

RACER had posed the same question to various drivers throughout media day, engaging in a conversation about comments made last year that the sport’s biggest race had started to feel less special. It never turned into a full-blown conversation in the garage or across the media landscape, but the comments were out there from the likes of Denny Hamlin, who had ranted on his podcast about how the racing had changed, drivers weren’t held accountable for wrecks, and driver skill wasn’t what it once was.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. had also asked on his podcast about whether the Daytona 500 had lost any of its mystique. Earnhardt shied away from diving into that, saying he wasn’t going to worry as long as the racing changed.

Keeping these comments in mind, when RACER brought the question to this year’s edition of the race, Blaney was one of those who not only answered but wanted to dissect where it had come from. And why it would be said in the first place.

“I don’t know why people say that,” Blaney said. “The racing has changed and Denny has talked about this a little bit. With this car, and I agree with him, I feel like it’s a little harder to show your skills as a speedway racer with this car than it used to be, and that’s just the way it is. That’s just the way this car is. So maybe that has something to do with it.

“But I don’t think it’s lost any luster, at least to me it hasn’t. I don’t know where that perception came from. People started talking about that, and I didn’t agree with it because it still means everything if you’re able to win it.”

Elliott and Blaney, both chasing their first Daytona 500 win acknowledge it's different nowadays, but say its no less special. Sean Gardner/Getty Images

Chase Elliott had a similar reaction. Elliott wanted better context on the reasoning behind the comments, and it was theorized that it might be how fuel-saving had changed the racing, the winner getting a playoff bid, the luck it takes, or the randomness of the winners.

“It’s always been a lottery winner,” Elliott said. “It’s definitely prestigious. I don’t like the narrative of the Super Bowl (analogy). I’ve said that for years. It’s not a season-long champion, so I don’t think that’s a fair parallel. But it’s a huge event. It’s one of the biggest sporting events in the United States every year and this race has always seemed a little bit on its own island throughout our season or at least that’s how I’ve viewed it. It’s kind of its own thing, and it’s almost like, all right, you have Daytona and hope it goes well, it’s a total toss-up whether or not you’re going to crash, and you hope things go in your favor. But it is a race when you get done and hang this thing up, or get told you’re done, you want to look back and say that you’ve won it. It’s just a big deal. It just is. I think for any racer, I’m sure it feels that way too.

“This race has been a toss-up winner for as long as I can remember. It has been that way for a long time; anybody can get caught up in a wreck at any time. A guy makes the right couple of moves in the last couple of laps, and you can have a great underdog story. That’s been a huge topic over the course of this event. I don’t see it as different today than it was 20 years ago when I first started watching it. It’s changed somewhat with the fuel savings and whatnot. William (Byron) was like 10th last year on the backstretch and won the race because everybody else crashed. The rest of us had already wrecked at least. So, it can all change really fast. And that’s OK. This is its own event. It’s a big one. As a racer, I think you have a lot of respect for it. I’ve certainly had a lot of respect for it. It’s an honor to be a part of it, and I never take for granted coming down here and driving for HMS and knowing that I have a shot when we drive in.”

Here is how the other drivers responded to RACER’s question about whether the Daytona 500 is still prestigious or needs something to change to get it back that way.

Joey Logano: “I’ve always looked at it as (prestigious). It’s The Great American Race. It’ll always be prestigious no matter how the race ends. I know it’s ended in a big ball of fire for a lot of people here recently and that is frustrating, don’t get me wrong. But at the same time, it’s the Daytona 500. You can go back and look at all the history. It’s the birthplace of our sport. How do you say that it’s not? I will never understand that. It’s massive. The event itself is massive. Here on Sunday, you’ll see all the people here and the hype around it. Yeah, it is the biggest race of the year. I used to say Phoenix was - for four people with the championship format. But now that that’s gone, this is the big one.”

Logano won 'The Great American Race' in 2015. Jerry Markland/Getty Images

For those saying it is different, do you think it’s because of how the racing has changed? Or the winners?

Logano: “Well, it is a superspeedway and there’s the chance and it has happened many times, unfortunately, but it does happen where somebody will win the race, and you’ll think, ‘Gosh that’s like the one win they’ll ever have.’ Or the one they’ll have in the next five years and it happens to be The Great American Race. That part probably sits a little hard for some of the competitors. I’d agree with that even myself. It doesn’t take anything from the race itself, though. It’s a superspeedway; it happens six times a year. But it doesn’t mean that what Daytona means is less. No way.”

Kyle Busch: “When you win the championship or when you win the championship race, like car, driver, team, everybody did their job, and you had the success to be able to go out there and put it all together and make it happen. Here at Daytona, it’s an 80% luck game. Yeah, you have to have the skill to calculate your fuel right, to only take one second of fuel on pit road versus 1.3 seconds on pit road to get the leapfrog strategy to get up front to play the chess game of being able to work your way through traffic when you need to get yourself back up front. But it’s not like it used to be, this race, of having driver skill be much involved in order to go there and just outdrive somebody else.”

Kyle Larson: “It’s always going to be prestigious and feel prestigious. I’ve never won the race; I’ve never even finished in the top five, so I don’t know what the feeling … I would imagine the feeling is still going to be extremely massive if it ever happens. But in a way, not that I fully agree with those comments and I don’t know if that’s exactly how they’re meant to be anyway. But it is difficult to get really excited about the winner when usually there’s a 20-car pileup, and the guy running toward the back squeaks through and then misses another wreck later and wins. But that’s the race, and that’s how it is. William Byron winning two in a row is not a fluke. So, the cream does rise, and he’s won there in the old-style car and this car. Daytona, Talladega, yeah, sure, anybody can win, but still, the teams position themselves the best, and drivers making the best decisions do win. I don’t know if that really answers your question or not, but it’s still always going to be prestigious.”

Bubba Wallace: “You have the race itself and then you have winning the race. It is (prestigious). I don’t know the way around the strategy we have to do now with the fuel saving. I don’t think the sport was smart enough to do it earlier. We could have been doing this 70 years ago, riding around and trying to run people out of fuel. But it evolved over the last three to five years, this is the new game. So, it is just totally different, and when everyone understands that it’s different now, we’re all just playing the same thing. It’s just a different way of going about it. So, I would say yes. It’s our biggest race of the year, and yeah, biggest purse we’ve had.”

Alex Bowman: “I think for me, the prestige is still there. It’s still the Daytona 500. The pageantry is still there. The driving the race car part when you’re riding around saving fuel that’s the bummer to me. I wish we knew how to fix that. I’m not smart enough to fix it. We all wish the speedway racing were a little different from what it is, but you’re still at the Daytona 500. That’s not going to change just because the style of racing is different, at least to me. It doesn’t mean any less to me; I’m still trying to win one, and hopefully we can get it done.”

Tyler Reddick: “I don’t know if I would knock the prestige of the race. I think from the driver’s standpoint, the path to winning the race has certainly changed quite a bit over the years. Certainly, every driver really wants to win this race, but the path to winning this race has changed as we evolved into the Next Gen car and as smart engineers and teams started figuring out how to position their cars toward the front. As much as I’d say some drivers, including myself, don’t love the fuel mileage games that come into play at the superspeedways, I don’t know if it’s a popular opinion or not, but without those fuel saving games, we would just be kind of be stuck two by two, two lines, throughout the whole field and not a lot of moving.

“Yeah, it’s just where it is right now and everyone still wants to win that race. But certainly it’s changed a lot in the fact that I remember even towards the beginning of my Cup career, you could get paired up with the right guy at Talladega and Daytona and find your way to the front, and that’s really not the case anymore. It’s really hard to break outside the big pack and get hooked up with somebody and drive to the front. You can’t knife your way through the field; the cars are just so close in the draft. So, I think that’s what they talk about and mean. Certainly, when I try to think of it in that sense, I think back to some of that stuff, and how drafting has changed at these really big racetracks, I definitely think the more handling is an issue on these really, really big racetracks, the less fuel mileage is a thing. I love the old Atlanta surface, but the racing we’ve been having at EchoPark Speedway has been really good, and handling is a really key factor in that race. It creates separation in the corners, and you can see guys knife their way through the field. It’s just where the cars are at on the real big tracks and where handling is not as big.”

Ross Chastain: “It’s hard to put into words, but thinking about what the France family did in taking the cars off the beach, moving them over here, the Daytona Rising (project), the way the grandstands look, the way the trophy is all kind of larger than life. The competitors I’ve seen and my heroes of the past that have won this race, to me, they are larger than life. They don’t seem like they’re like all of us. They’re something bigger when they win this race.”