Marlin breaks through in '94 Daytona 500

Third in a four-part series on past Daytona 500s as the 2012 race looms on Feb. 26.

There's a Sterling Marlin story that ranks among the most amusing in NASCAR lore.

In 1976, Sterling's father, Clifton "Coo Coo" Marlin, was at a loss about how to tell his wife, Eula Faye, that he had decided to let the couple's 17-year-old son follow him as a NASCAR driver.

He chose the direct approach. "Pass the taters, Eula Faye, " Coo Coo said at dinner one night that spring, "Sterling is starting at Talladega."

Thus was born the driving career that finally led to a first Winston Cup victory on Feb. 20, 1994, a popular triumph that dramatically came in stock car racing's most important event, the Daytona 500.

At first worried and reluctant, Eula Faye Marlin eventually accepted her son "going racing," and became a loving fan. When his mom was stricken with the cancer that was to take her life in 1988, Sterling deeply wanted to win a race to dedicate to her before she passed away.

Sadly, it didn't happen.

But Coo Coo Marlin, then 62, was at Daytona International Speedway to watch as Sterling erased the zero from the family's record.

Before the rousing triumph in the season opener, the Marlins were a combined 0-for-443 in Winston Cup races.

Coo Coo took a 125-mile qualifying event at Daytona in 1973, but that doesn't count in official standings and he wound up winless in 135 starts. Sterling went into the 500 of 1994 without a victory in 278 races over a span of 18 years.

"I always knew I could win if I got with a real good team," said Sterling Marlin, who scored his initial triumph while driving a Chevrolet fielded by the now-defunct Morgan/McClure outfit from Abingdon, Va.

"And for some reason I knew we were going to win this race. I came down here thinking that, and nothing happened to change my mind."

There was some changing, however, that was pivotal to Marlin outrunning Ford's Ernie Irvan at the finish. His Tony Glover-led crew made critical chassis adjustments on its yellow Chevy each pit stop during the first half of the 200-lap race, including flaring the front fenders out to create more downforce on the car's nose.

"I've got to hand it to the crew boys," said Marlin, who tooked the checkered flag 0.19 seconds ahead of Ernie Irvan, the Ford-driving runner-up.

"They finally got the car to handling and that enabled me to hold the throttle wide open all the way around the track. That was the key, especially after Ernie and some of the rest of 'em got to slipping in the corners."

Coo Coo Marlin, a farmer from Columbia, Tenn., accompanied his son to the press box for the traditional winner's interview and beamed proudly, saying he felt that Sterling would keep the lead over the final 21 laps "if he didn't run out of gas."

Sterling said he had been assured by team co-owner Tim Morgan, calculating the gas mileage, that he had just enough fuel to go the final 59 laps, or 147.5 miles on the famous 2.5-mile track in Florida.

“They told me by radio that I had enough fuel to make the distance, and I never questioned it,” said Sterling. “I held it wide open and didn’t worry about saving gas.”

Turned out it was very, very close, though.

After taking the checkered flag, Marlin motored slowly down pit road as members of other teams came across the wall to either slap his hand, give a high-five or tap on the hood of the car. About halfway to the turn-off leading to Victory Lane, Marlin’s tank ran dry and his car had to be pushed to the post-race ceremonies.

Asked his thoughts during the last lap, when a charging Irvan was closing fast in the Robert Yates Team,’s Ford he’d had in front for 84 laps, Marlin chuckled.

“I just told myself it was a short-track Saturday night at Nashville and there ain’t nothing to it,” he answered.

The younger Marlin, then 36, was a former track champion at Nashville Raceway.

Sterling remembered coming to Daytona and other speedways with his father and not being allowed into the garage areas because he was too young.

"I'd hang on the fence and look pitiful and finally the NASCAR guys would let me in," he said with a smile. "By the time I was 14 or 15 I began maintaining Daddy's race cars in a little ol' shop behind our house while he farmed.

"I liked working in racing a lot better than farmin'. A little later on I started changing tires during pit stops for him."

That, surmised Marlin, is why every crew guy came on pit road to congratulate him on his way to Victory Lane.

"They knew I've been in racing all my life – that I was one of them," he said.

"I breathed a big sigh of relief when I got the checkered flag, but I've always believed in myself, believed that I could do it. I never gave up.

“Even though it took me a long time to win, the wait has been worth it. Winning feels every bit as good as I always figured it would.”

Sterling was to know that magic feeling again the following year in the Daytona 500, repeating as the victor.

He scored eight more victories before retiring to the family farm in 2005 at age 47.

Coo Coo Marlin, who so succinctly announced – between servings of "taters+ – that Sterling was to become a driver, passed away in 2005 at age 73.

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