Dale vs. Dale A Daytona 500 the Jarretts NASCAR won't forget

The 1993 Daytona 500, run 30 years ago today, is first and foremost a love story.

Yes, it was the Dale and Dale Show. Yes, it was the victory that sparked Dale Jarrett's climb toward the NASCAR Hall of Fame. Yes, it was the first Cup Series win for second-year team owner Joe Gibbs, also a future Hall of Famer, who has since added 199 more of them. Yes, it was all of that and more. But yes, it was also a love story. After all, it did happen on Valentine's Day.

To fully appreciate that day, we must put it within the context of the era. This Daytona 500 was the first race run after the retirement of Richard Petty. It marked only the second career start for a kid named Jeff Gordon, hailing from California and driving a rainbow-covered car he might as well have just landed from another planet. His boss, Rick Hendrick, was respected throughout the garage, but he also had yet to win a series championship. This was still the world of Junior Johnson, Darrell Waltrip and above all else, Dale Earnhardt. Alan Kulwicki and Davey Allison were still alive, the defending series champion and the defending Daytona 500 champion. People still believed that having a multicar team would never work.

Gibbs had just retired as Washington's head coach, his final game on the sideline (for then, at least) had taken place only six weeks earlier, a loss in the first round of the NFL playoffs. The year before, he won his third Super Bowl ring as a head coach. A lifelong hot-rod enthusiast, Gibbs was making his foray into the NASCAR world with the assistance of Hendrick. Among his very first hires was an up-and-coming crew chief named Jimmy Makar, and it was Makar who suggested hiring his brother-in-law as their driver.

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