Derrike Cope once beat Dale Earnhardt in the Daytona 500. At 62, he’s returning to the race
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Derrike Cope said he made it a point long ago to never read Speedway Scene, an autosports news publication launched in 1971, and anything written about him “good, bad or ugly.”
These days, the commentary comes on different platforms, but Cope said he’s not paying attention to social media either, and the critics who might question why he, at age 62, is entering this year’s Daytona 500.
“I really don’t care what other people think,” Cope told reporters Friday. “If I did, I probably wouldn’t even be in this position.”
Cope is locked into NASCAR’s season opener on Feb. 14 driving the No. 15 Chevrolet for Rick Ware Racing, a team whose Cup charter guarantees the driver entry into the event. Although Cope is the team manager for StarCom Racing, which fields the No. 00 Chevrolet car driven by Quin Houff, he said it’s always been his goal to get behind the wheel again. The Daytona 500 felt like the right event to cap his racing career, he said.
The driver and the race have a history. Cope won the 1990 Daytona 500 by beating out the late Dale Earnhardt on the final lap. Earnhardt blew a tire rounding Turn 3 and Cope usurped the lead from second place for his first Cup win. It was an upset victory by all accounts. He appeared on “Late Night with David Letterman” a few days after the race and said he spoke with Earnhardt about it at the time, telling the driver it was an experience he hoped they’d one day share. (They would after Earnhardt won the 1998 Daytona 500.)
Cope recalled Earnhardt’s response to him was, “Yeah, I hope I do, but it’s not the Daytona 499.”
“When (Earnhardt) said something like that, you realize that he realizes that it’s not over until it’s over,” Cope said. “That’s what I took away from that particular situation.”
Cope will be an underdog again in this year’s race. His only two Cup wins were in 1990, and his last entry in the Daytona 500 was in 2004, when he finished in 30th place. Although Cope raced in other Cup events since then for a total of 427 series starts over a NASCAR driving career that spans four decades, he will become the second-oldest driver to compete in NASCAR’s iconic superspeedway race.
Mark Thompson raced in the 2018 Daytona 500 at age 66 and finished 22nd. Morgan Shepherd attempted to qualify for the 2014 race at age 72, but ultimately did not make the main event (he still competed in two Cup events that year). Dave Marcis has been the only other driver in his 60s to make a Daytona 500 start. He was 60 years old in the 2002 event and finished second-to-last due to an engine issue.
Cope said he didn’t think of age as a debilitating factor as long as the driver is in shape and “mentally strong.” He called the Daytona 500 a race that is “a lot more mental.”
“Understanding the air and what types of runs, what types of surges the car will get, assessing your car, making good, conscious decisions, driving within yourself,” Cope said. “That’s the biggest thing.”
The opportunity for him to race in this year’s Daytona 500 was a surprise deal coordinated by his wife, Elyshia, and team executives at Rick Ware Racing, Cope said, so he’s looking at the event as a chance to absorb the atmosphere. Although he said he has “nothing to prove,” Cope is not taking the race lightly and said he believes he can be competitive.
“This race is difficult to win,” Cope said. “And after you win it, you feel like you can go back and win it again. And every time you go there, you feel that way. And I still feel that way.”
Cope noted that the competition and race package is a “different animal” than when he last entered, but he has a game plan. It involves preserving his car during prerace events earlier in the week, then putting himself in position late in the race by “lay(ing) in the weeds” and trying to miss early wrecks next Sunday.
“Staying on the lead lap is my key,” Cope said. “Assessing what I have in the race car, finding who I feel like I can align myself with, how they’re trying to utilize me, who’s trying to manipulate me, if I can manipulate other people. And at that point, with 20 (laps) to go, then I’ll make my bed and I’ll lay in it.”
There will be in-race adjustments that inevitably happen.
“(I’ll) go down there, see what I have, work with it, get to 180 laps, and at that point if I’m still there on the lead lap on 180 laps, they will have to deal with me,” Cope said.
Cope said he’s never gone to Daytona with preconceived notions. Others shouldn’t either, because as Cope proved in 1990, it’s not over until it’s over.
This story was originally published February 6, 2021 at 3:31 PM with the headline "Derrike Cope once beat Dale Earnhardt in the Daytona 500. At 62, he’s returning to the race."
