Daytona 500

DAYTONA

Old circuit from north looking south; beach at left, A1A at right.

The March 2008 issue of my Car & Driver magazine has an article about the Daytona 500.
That’s apparently because this year is the 50th running of the Daytona 500.
We had to figger that out.
If the first Daytona 500 was in 1959, our first thought was 2008 would be the 49th.
But it’s not.
1968 was the 10th Daytona 500, 1978 the 20th, ‘88 the 30th, ‘98 the 40th, and the 50th would be 2008.
The giant Daytona Speedway was built because racing on the beach was becoming impossible.
The long hard-packed beach at Daytona was excellent for automotive speed-trials, and used for that until speed-trials were moved to the vast Bonneville Salt-Flats near Great Salt Lake.
Stockcar racing was taking place on the beach also.
A long oval-track (pictured) was set up by linking the beach with narrow parallel Route A1A by two beach-sand turns. (The Curtis Turner ‘57 Ford convertible is on A1A.)
But racing on that was becoming impossible.
The width of the beach segment could vary with the tides, and often the beach segment would be completely inundated.
Parking was also becoming impossible.
There were space limitations, and often spectators returned to their cars parked on the beach and found them bumper-deep in the Atlantic Ocean.
“Big Bill” France, Sr., who had been promoting the beach-races, and also founded NASCAR (the National Association of Stock Car Auto Racing) in 1948, decided the only way to continue car-racing at Daytona was to build the Speedway.
The state of Florida was involved too, since Daytona car-racing was a cash-cow.
Bond-issues were floated to build the Speedway, and government authorities set up.

That’s Curtis Turner in the ‘57 Ford convertible.

But all that crashed mightily in flames, and “Big Bill” ended up building the Speedway on his own nickel — although he borrowed heavily, sold stock at a discount, and used ticket-sales at the future Speedway to help build it.
The Speedway has come a long way, as have so-called “stockcars.” (The ‘58 Pontiacs pictured on the original track are stockcars.)
Although manufacturers could field better equipment to win races. (Those Pontiacs probably have triple-carb motors.)
Competition became so intense, the manufacturers were fielding special gigantic motors that could generate hundreds of horsepower, and special body-panels to improve aerodynamics.
The winged Chargers and SuperBirds of the early ‘70s were an extravagant example — an application you’d never see on the street.
Then too the entrants were making modifications to give them an edge.
One modification made sense. The early ‘50s Hudsons had deeply shrouded rear wheel-wells. An axle would break, a wheel came loose, and then the wheel hung up in the wheel-well, usually flipping the car and perhaps killing the driver and spectators.
The modification was to swap out the stock rear-axle for that of a Ford truck with full-floating hubs.

‘58 Pontiacs slide off the beach toward A1A.

An axle could break, but the wheel stayed on the hub-end, since it was a full-floating hub.
NASCAR, in its infinite wisdom, decided this made more sense than a loose wheel, so allowed the entrants to make the modification.
Smokey Yunick, a Daytona-based entrant, had another trick that could be called “cheatin’.”
He noticed the NASCAR inspectors were always measuring the front-left cylinder of an engine to verify it met the displacement limits; so he bored out all the others allowing larger pistons in those and more horsepower.
Another trick was body-modifications to improve aerodynamics. The worst violation was the famed “banana-car,” a ‘65 Ford, that was smaller than the stock car, with a body shaped like a banana: low in the front, and high in the back.
So NASCAR started using body-templates; the racer had to be the same shape as a stock car.
At first stockcar racers were built from actual stock cars; Richard Petty (for example) would start with a stock Dodge in white, put in a roll-cage, and then modify the suspension to suit racing.
But stockcar racing advanced beyond that. Racers moved to purpose-built chassis built by Banjo Matthews, sheathed with steel panels to make them look like a Chevy or Ford, or whatever. (And if it was a Chevy, it had a Chevy motor; and “Fords” had Ford motors.)
Now the NASCAR stockcars are hardly stock; racers purpose-built by the entrants as a tube chassis with sheetmetal sheathing to make them look like Chevys or Fords or Dodges, whatever. (It’s called a Dodge-Charger, for example, but ya’d never know by looking.)
They don’t even have passenger seats or doors any more, or headlights or windshield-wipers.
They still have the full-floating tractor rear-axle; but unlike Indy cars can be crashed and spun out or flipped without threatening the driver.
They’re incredibly fast, and well beyond taking your grandmother to church.

This is not being put on my family’s web-site, which limits the number of href tags I can put in. Actually, it ain’t the web-site; but members of my famblee go ballistic if I have more than two links.

“Triple-carb motors” are automobile engines with three two-barrel carburetors. The typical car V8 had a single two-barrel carburetor, or perhaps a four-barrel carburetor for more performance. To breathe even better, an engine might have three two-barrel carburetors lined in a row, or perhaps two four-barrel carburetors. Later carburetor manufacturers (like Holley) made huge four-barrel carburetors that could move more air than two four-barrels.

RE: “In white........” —Terminology for delivering a factory car for modification into a racer. Such cars were usually delivered without a drive-train, in white paint.