by Larry McReynolds

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Usually, this is when my inbox gets flooded by fans — both NASCAR and of the stick-and-ball variety — asking me why we talk so much about the first race of a 36-race schedule.

The answer is simple: The Daytona 500 is the most prestigious of all the NASCAR races we run. It always has been and I see it always being that way.

When you look at other sports, the most important event for them is the last event — whether it is the Super Bowl, the Final Four, the World Series, Stanley Cup playoffs, etc, it always is at the end of their season. Well our sport is a little different because our biggest and most prestigious race of the year is the first one of the season. It's the one that every driver wants to win at least once in their career.

Aside from the prestige of the event, I think the most important thing, with our season that runs from February to November and being so long and so drawn-out, is that coming out of Daytona with a good start. It's like it almost sets the tone for the next several weeks.

The contradiction to that was last year with Ryan Newman and Kurt Busch. They finished 1-2, but after that you couldn't have had a more dismal season. The flip-side to that was the No. 48 car. Jimmie Johnson didn't come out of Daytona very good, but ended up as our champion by the time Homestead in November rolled around. Remember, it's a virtual Who's Who that have won the Daytona 500 while at the same time it's a virtual Who's Who that hasn't.

The Daytona 500 means so much to our sport and these drivers and teams. Every Indy car driver wants to win the Indianapolis 500. Every Formula One driver wants to win at Monaco. Every NASCAR driver wants to win the Daytona 500.

I have to tell you, folks, when you drive through that tunnel for the first time in February you get that spine-tingling feeling and you say to yourself, "This is it — it's Daytona and it's a new season." The other thing that none of lose sight of is that at the end of a week and a half down there, we will all know who the new Daytona 500 champion will be. As the winner of the race, you also know that you will spend the night and your car will be put into the Daytona Experience on Monday morning and will remain there for a year.

As I tell people all the time, when you win the Daytona 500, it stays with you the rest of your life. Even today, 17 years after the first one I won as a crew chief and 11 years after the second, whenever I do an appearance or speech, I am always introduced as a two-time Daytona 500 winning crew chief.

In both cases there was so much going on, first from the longest Victory Lane party you can image, to trying to get your car through post-race inspection, to being run from suite to suite to suite, that even though the race was over about 5 p.m., I didn't get back to my motorcoach until after 11:30 p.m. It was then that it really finally sank in what we had accomplished.

I distinctly remember in 1992, I drove home Monday with my wife and two kids and it wasn't until we were up there on the highway rolling north to Charlotte that it actually sank in for me what Davey and I and the team had accomplished the day before.

Not a hmmm-'Dinger

Speed Mail Larry McReynolds
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I am probably not surprised that AJ Allmendinger is going to go race for Gillett-Evernham Motorsports, but I do have to admit being surprised at the fact that he replaced Elliott Sadler. I love Elliott to death. He is one of my buddies that I work with on the Speed broadcasts. I consider him a friend but obviously he has been over there for a few years and the performance just hasn't been there for whatever reason. Elliott hasn't forgotten how to drive a race car, but after several crew chief changes, for whatever reasons the results just never materialized. They just didn't have a lot of success, so I am surprised in some ways of the parting but not surprised when I sit back and analyze it.

The other thing is, if you look at it, other than Kasey Kahne's short run there in late May early June, no one ran well at Gillett-Evernham. So is changing Elliott Sadler in the No. 19 car the answer? I am just not so sure yet.

Tough times

I also hate it so much for the men and women in our industry over the last few months that have lost their jobs. I count my blessings every day of how fortunate that I have been throughout my career in NASCAR. With that being said, I also don't ever take anything for granted. Regardless of my contract with FOX Sports, Speed Channel or TNT, I always know I have to go out and do the best job I can every single broadcast. I don't just take it for granted.

There's never a good time to get laid off but for these folks to lose their jobs right before the holidays is especially brutal. At the same time, it's like our sport needed a wake up call. Things had slowly but surely been getting out of control and out of hand. It's nobody's fault, it was just the growing of the sport.

To know that the budget for a Sprint Cup team has doubled in the last five or six years is ridiculous. To know that salaries for drivers, crew chiefs and crew members have doubled, tripled or even quadrupled in the last five or six years, well, our sport can't stand that. So it's almost like we needed a wake up call, but I hate it for those that have been affected. Regardless of the overall economic situation surrounding our sport, it seemed inevitable that we were going to hit the wall sooner or later.

Hope for 2009

The biggest thing I am looking forward to in 2009, regardless of the testing policy, a lot more teams have a better understanding of this new car than ever before. Now we have a full season under our belt at all the tracks. Heading into last year, we had a lot of unknowns as to how the car would react at most of the tracks. That has been eliminated and that has me excited because I think we will see even better racing in NASCAR than ever before.

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FOX race analyst Larry McReynolds has more than 25 years of NASCAR experience as a mechanic, crew chief and broadcaster. He and his fellow Crew Chief Club members take you behind the wall at www.crewchiefclub.com.

"How to Become a Winning Crew Chief" is on bookstore shelves, or you may order your own autographed copy from www.DWStore.com.