Daytona kicks off minus circus atmosphere

The 50th race will be run on Feb. 17.

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. (AP) — There were no marriage proposals, no child reporters and hardly any silly questions.

Media day at the Daytona 500 didn’t even have a prediction.

No doubt, NASCAR’s season-opening event has a long way to go before it reaches the level of the Super Bowl.

Although it was held under a huge, white tent outside Daytona International Speedway on Thursday, it was missing the circus-type atmosphere of Super Bowl media day.

The juiciest story of the day came from Jamie McMurray, who recounted his recent four-day stint as jury foreman in a rape trial.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. didn’t have anything to say about his strained relationship with his stepmother or his split from Dale Earnhardt Inc.

Kyle Busch downplayed his offseason move from Hendrick Motorsports to Joe Gibbs Racing.

Even the Car of Tomorrow has pretty much become old news.

Maybe the bride who crashed Super Bowl media day would have livened up the place.

“I could find a thousand things better to do than this,” two-time Cup series champion Tony Stewart said as he sat down to speak to dozens of reporters.

Stewart was annoyed with the entire daylong event. He spent several hours shuffling between television cameras, radio microphones, tape recorders and hordes of reporters, and by the end of the day, he felt like he was answering the same questions he’d been asked since the end of last season.

“What are you going to ask me today that you didn’t ask me two weeks ago and three weeks ago and five weeks ago?” Stewart quipped. “Ask me something different.”

How about the Car of Tomorrow making its Daytona debut on Feb. 17?

“I don’t understand why we’re still answering the same question about how does it feel,” Stewart said, wearing his orange and black race suit. “Nobody knows.

“Nobody can feel 3 or 4 horsepower, especially by yourself. I don’t know how in the hell we’re supposed to feel it until we get out there with other cars, and we still can’t do that because we have to do media day before we get on the track.

“I’m dressed up with nowhere to go. I want to know myself, but I’ve got to spend all day in here myself.”

Although Stewart’s mild rant was one of the more intriguing media day story lines, plenty else happened.

There was talk about the 50th anniversary of the Daytona 500, the addition of four open-wheel champions to NASCAR, the current state of the sport, Hendrick’s dominance last year and Toyota’s expected improvement in its second season.