Speed Weeks: How Daytona’s Hard-Packed Sand Built American Racing
Long before the towering grandstands of the Daytona 500, the racing happened right on the beach. The wide, hard packed sand of Daytona Beach was so smooth and firm that drivers discovered they could open up the throttle and fly, and a legend was born.
As early as 1903, daredevils were timing speed runs on the sand, and over the following decades Daytona became the place to chase land speed records. Cars roared along the shoreline while crowds watched from the dunes. Neighboring Ormond Beach still calls itself the Birthplace of Speed.
When the record chasers moved on to the salt flats out west, local racers kept the thrill alive with stock car events run on a course that used both the beach and the parallel highway. The cars slid through sandy corners as the tide crept in, a spectacle unlike anything else in motorsport.
Out of those beach races grew something huge. In December 1947 Bill France called a meeting of racing people at the Streamline Hotel in Daytona Beach, and NASCAR was incorporated in February 1948. A decade later the action moved to the giant new Daytona International Speedway.
Today Speed Weeks each February still kicks off the racing season with the famous Daytona 500. It all traces back to a simple discovery, that the firm sand of one Florida beach was practically built for going fast.
