Dover remains Derrike Cope's Daytona 500 vindication

By Tom Stinson

Years from now, Cope's headstone just may read: "Derrike Cope, Daytona 500 winner ... and don't forget about Dover."

Dover, Del., to many the armpit of the Winston Cup circuit, will always be a special place for Cope.

"It really is," Cope admits, "more so than people might think."

You see, Dover remains Cope's vindication. His proof that no matter what popular theory might say, his career is not limited to Dale Earnhardt running over a hunk of metal in turn three on the last lap of the 1990 Daytona 500. Dover remains Cope's answer to his Daytona shocker.

Because no matter what anybody says, no matter how much they tried to chalk him up as a flash in the pan and all that through most of the '90's, Cope knows that he kicked all their butts one Sunday at Dover.

No bellhousing, no tricks, no questions ... Cope won a Winston Cup race.

"I came here after a half-season of ridicule after Daytona," Cope says of '90. "We came here and we dusted 'em. ... Yeah, this race has a good place in my heart."

Exactly why, of course, is obvious.

Cope led 93 laps that day in Dover. He ran down Rusty Wallace and then held off Mark Martin and Ken Schrader, among others. He won from the 15th starting position at a place where track position is key. He even won after a big-time miscue when his Bob Whitcomb-owned Chevy ran out of gas midway through the race.

Bottom line is, he won.

Theoretically, that should have shut the mouths of all the naysayers after his Daytona triumph, which just happened to be the biggest upset in the history of NASCAR's biggest race. Thing is, to this day, Cope is still most remembered for backing into victory lane at Daytona.

"It was Dale Earnhardt," Cope says, explaining why his Daytona win still receives so much scrutiny. "And it was Daytona and I hadn't been in the sport all that long."

He's right there.

Cope hadn't been in the sport long at all, all of 70 races before winning Daytona, and several of those were here-and-there starts while competing on the West Coast. Cope never really appeared on a regular basis until 1988, and he'd never even finished among the top five until that day in Daytona.

"I guess people just felt like we didn't deserve something like that at that point in time," Cope continued. "I don't know. People just have a way of demeaning something, or trying to, and saying things ... even to this day."

Thing is, as much as Cope is accused of backing into Daytona's victory lane, nobody else beat him to the punch when Earnhardt cut a tire on that piece of bellhousing. Nobody else was in position to take advantage of anything.

Besides, it's not like it was the first time somebody won a Winston Cup race when they didn't exactly have the best car that day. For that matter, it's not the first time somebody won the Daytona 500 when they didn't exactly have the best car that day.

Yet, few have carried the stigma Cope has, even after his victory at Dover.

For whatever reason, Cope still finds himself lumped in among those winners with asterisks, the ones who for one reason or another have never truly received the respect bestowed upon Winston Cup winners.

Richard Brickhouse and the Talladega walkout, Brett Bodine's pit-road controversy, Greg Sacks' suspect car, Jody Ridley and Joe Lee Johnson, benefactors of attrition. There have been others. Shoot, even NASCAR's first winner, Jim Roper in 1949, didn't get there without something of an asterisk by his name. (The driver originally flagged the winner that day had altered springs in his car.)

Among those, Cope is the only driver to have won again. It never seemed to matter, though. To this day, he's still NASCAR's poster boy for lucky breaks.

But forget all that. Forget circumstances and attrition and hunks of bellhousing. Fact is, they won. They took the checkered flag first, luck or not luck.

And who's keeping tabs on this, anyway? Because let's not pretend as though lucky breaks haven't helped define a few others, too.

Darrell Waltrip needed help from Mother Nature to finally win the Southern 500 ... Richard Petty's Daytona 500 list would stop at six if Cale Yarborough and Donnie Allison could have controlled themselves ... Michael Waltrip in The Winston last year ... Kyle Petty's last win - right here at Dover, as a matter of fact - came after 20 guys crashed on the first lap.

The list goes on and on. The bottom line is, they all won under the circumstances for their given day. That's what matters.

As for Cope, he says he never let the whispers get to him, neither in 1990 nor today. He came from 3,000 miles away to stake a claim in Winston Cup racing. A little ridicule isn't going to bother him ... thanks in large part to Dover and a race here one Sunday seven years ago.

"To go up there and flat whip 'em, just flat whip 'em, proved we were the best team on that Sunday," he says. "We were the best in the world on that Sunday. They can't take that away from us."

No matter how hard they try.

Reprinted by permission of NASCAR Winston Cup Scene - June 5, 1997