Daytona International Speedway

The track you are passing right now is, by most measures, the most famous oval in American motorsport. The Daytona International Speedway opened February twenty-second, nineteen fifty-nine, and almost nothing about its creation went according to plan.

Bill France Senior had a vision for a two-and-a-half-mile tri-oval with thirty-one-degree banking in the turns, steeper than anything that existed. He broke ground in November of nineteen fifty-seven, but the money ran out. France sold three hundred thousand shares of stock to local residents, took a second mortgage on his house, secured a six-hundred-thousand-dollar loan from Texas oil heir Clint Murchison Senior, and eventually financed the final phase of construction by selling tickets to a race that had not yet been run.

The design was radical. The banking was so severe that drivers could take the turns at full speed without lifting off the throttle. When the speedway opened it was the fastest race track ever to host a stock car event.

The inaugural Daytona Five Hundred drew forty-two thousand fans and produced one of the most dramatic finishes in racing history. Lee Petty and Johnny Beauchamp crossed the finish line so close together that no one could tell who had won. NASCAR spent three days reviewing photographs and newsreel footage before declaring Petty the winner.

Since then, the Daytona Five Hundred has opened every NASCAR season. Richard Petty won it seven times. Dale Earnhardt spent twenty attempts trying to win it before finally taking the checkered flag in nineteen ninety-eight, setting off one of the most emotional celebrations in the sport's history.

The track has been rebuilt and expanded across the decades, but the basic geometry France laid out in the nineteen fifties is unchanged. The same banking that launched beach racing into the modern era is still right here, waiting for next February.