Lund battled with Fred Lorenzen and Ned Jarrett during the closing laps and took the victory when his rivals’ gas tanks ran dry late in the race.
“While all the other teams were having their drivers come in for tires and fuel, our guys would add fuel, check the set we had on there and send Tiny back out,” said current Wood Brothers Racing co-owner Eddie Wood. “Tiny stepped in when they needed him most and took the win.”
All told, Wood Brothers Raacing has won the Daytona 500 five times with Lund in 1963, Cale Yarborough in 1969, A.J. Foyt in 1972, David Pearson in 1976 and Trevor Bayne in 2011.
Pearson was set to add another Daytona 500 victory to the list in 1975 when he spun on the backstretch with three laps remaining. That left Benny Parsons in position to win for team owner L.G. Dewitt.
Parsons’ key to victory was a drafting assist from Richard Petty, who was eight laps down.
“It’s fantastic,” Parsons said. “This is it. This is the biggest day of my life. Better than winning the 1973 Winston Cup championship. “Richard could have backed out or he could have run away from me. He waved for me to join him as he went by.”
In 1967, Mario Andretti came to Daytona in a Ford fielded by Holman Moody. Andretti was already making a name for himself on the international racing scene.
Andretti’s Ford Fairlane was so loose no one wanted to race with him. Those that raced against him chalked it up to inexperience, but in actuality, the small rear spoiler he was running that day dictated he race from the lead because that’s where the car handled best.
Late in the race, teammate Fred Lorenzen was given the signal to leave the pits first, but Andretti tracked him down and passed him to win the race. Andretti led for 112 of 200 laps.
“I was really loose following so I had to lead,” Andretti said in 2015. “And I had to run high because the car that was following me had to stay under me. I couldn’t let anyone pass me on the outside — they would have to pass me on the inside. I knew what I had to do to stay alive, so the fact I went for the lead all the time had those guys confused.”
Everyone remembers Richard Petty’s 1979 Daytona 500 victory when leaders Donnie Allison and Cale Yarborough crashed on the final lap. Petty, who was running third at the time of the crash, held off Darrell Waltrip and Foyt for his sixth of seven Daytona 500 triumphs.
The crash and subsequent post-race fight among Allison, his brother Bobby and Yarborough highlighted the first live flag-to-flag coverage of the race on CBS.
In February 1990, another of the great upsets in NASCAR history came when Derrike Cope passed Dale Earnhardt on the final lap to win the Daytona 500 after Earnhardt cut a tire.
“Certainly, winning the 1990 Daytona 500 was my biggest victory for sure,” Cope said. “It was a dynamic day for the entire group there at Whitcomb Racing.
“Even on an old set of tires late in the race, I managed to be up front in position to win. When the flat tire happened for Dale Earnhardt, we both ran over the piece of bell housing. His tire went down and my tire didn’t and we went on to victory lane. Terry Labonte and Bill Elliott had tried me collectively down the backstretch four of five laps earlier and I knew they didn’t have anything for me. I knew it was going to be between me and Dale.”
After 20 years of Daytona 500 starts and disappointments, Earnhardt collected his elusive Daytona 500 victory in February 1998.
Wood Brothers Racing enjoyed another surprise Daytona 500 win in 2011 with Bayne behind the wheel. After two green-white-checkered attempts, the 20-year-old Knoxville, Tenn., native surprised even himself, screaming with excitement via two-way radio, “Are you kidding me right now? Are you kidding me? We just won the Daytona 500!”
Surprise winner or not, a Daytona 500 victory is an unbelievable experience.