Season Begins With a Big Bang : Daytona 500: The top event is first on the calendar, and pole qualifying is today.

The start of a new season is always a time for optimism, but when the season opens with the sport’s biggest race, it raises the anxiety level several notches.

That is how it is with the NASCAR Winston Cup stock- car racing series, which starts its 31-race chase for a $35-million payout with its premier event, the Daytona 500.

Qualifying for the cars--designed to look like American-built passenger vehicles--will be held today on Daytona International Raceway’s 2 1/2-mile tri-oval. Only the front row for the Feb. 19 race will be established today. The rest of the 42-car field will be determined by results of the twin 125-mile races on Thursday.

Starting from the pole has not been necessary to win in recent years, but that won’t stop 66 hopefuls from making the effort. Not since Bill Elliott in 1987 has a driver led at the start and the finish.

Only six Daytona 500s have been won from the pole.

As in most new seasons, drivers, crews and fans await the effect changes made in the off-season will have on the racing, but the constant equation is the presence of Dale Earnhardt, the seven-time champion from Kannapolis, N.C., who is going for a record eighth title in Richard Childress’ Chevrolet.

“The Intimidator,” as his peers refer to the 43-year-old driver, has won 63 races in his 20 years on the Winston Cup circuit--but none were the Daytona 500. This will be his 17th try.

“It’s the biggest danged race of the year and I’m still trying to win it,” Earnhardt said Friday after practice runs in his new Chevy Monte Carlo. “We’re running good. We could win the pole. Seems like we’re nearly always in a position to win (the race) but it never happens. Maybe we can figure out a way to win this one.”

The return of the Chevrolet Monte Carlo is one of the major changes this year. It has replaced the Lumina, which won four of the last five Daytona 500s after the old Monte Carlo was retired in 1989.

“It seems like a good car,” said Jeff Gordon, who won the Brickyard 400 last August in a Lumina. “It may not be fast enough to win the pole, but it should do well in the race. It should handle well in the pack.”

Although the 1995 Monte Carlo will make its Winston Cup debut today, it demonstrated its capability to win last Sunday when Ron Hornaday Jr. of Palmdale drove one to victory in a Southwest Tour race at Phoenix International Raceway.

Darrell Waltrip was the last to win a Winston Cup race in a Monte Carlo, at Martinsville, Va., in 1989, but at 48 he is afraid time is running out on his winning again.

“I’ll admit, I’m worried about being 48,” the 1989 Daytona 500 winner said. “If you look at all professional athletes in the twilight of their careers, they quit winning. That’s a bad sign.

“Daytona is an exciting time. It’s the start of a new year and we’ve got a new car, and I feel like a 16-year-old with a new car. I’m anxious to go out and drive it and see how it’s going to do.”

In significant driver changes, Elliott has left Junior Johnson, gone home to Dawsonville, Ga., and joined his brothers, Ernie and Dan, in a family Ford team; and Dale Jarrett has switched from Joe Gibbs’ team to Robert Yates’ as a replacement for the injured Ernie Irvan.

Brett Bodine will take over in Johnson’s car and Bobby Labonte will drive for Gibbs.

Elliott, who won from the pole in both 1985 and 1987, sees Jarrett’s Ford Thunderbird as the pole favorite.

“It seems like the new Chevrolet is awful good, but from what I’ve seen in practice, the 28 car (Jarrett’s) looks like it has the best shot,” he said.

Jarrett, who won the 500 in 1993 for Gibbs in his second year as a NASCAR car owner, does not disagree.

“I expect to sit on the pole,” he said. “I think we’re looking at a speed close to 193 (m.p.h.) for the pole and I think we can run 193. Three or four cars will be right there, but one of them should be us.”

Terry Labonte, who won the Winston Cup championship in 1984 but has never won the Daytona 500, was the fastest driver in Friday’s final practice with an unofficial lap of 193.316 m.p.h. in one of Rick Hendricks’ three Chevrolets.

Jarrett was next at 193.130.

Rookie driver Randy Lajoie of Norwalk, Conn., and car owner Bill Lewis were fined a combined $33,000 for trying to alter the position of the rear deck lid on their Pontiac, thus changing the aerodynamic down-force of the car.