#26 - Beyond the Beach - The First Daytona 500
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03/29/2018 Matt McLaughlin |
(Editor’s Note) In 1997
- 1998, Matt McLaughlin penned a special Anthology of historical pieces in
honor of the 50th Anniversary of NASCAR entitled "50 Years of NASCAR
Racing." Matt has entrusted the entire collection, minus one or two that
were misfiled back then and cannot be salvaged, to my tender, loving care.
As NASCAR turns 70, the
Anthology itself will celebrate a 20th anniversary through 2018, and will run
again here on Race Fans Forever. As before, there is no record of which pieces
came first, so it will appear in the sequence presented earlier. Please, sit
back and enjoy as you take a journey back through the pages of history and
perhaps relive a memory or two.
As always, many thanks
to Matt, and God bless you my friend. ~PattyKay
To those drivers slated to run in the very first
Daytona 500, their first glimpse of the brand new speedway must have been awe
inspiring. When Bill France Sr. first proposed a two and a half-mile race
course with high banked corners, more than a few people scoffed that it would
never be built, and some even said it couldn't be built. There had been long
delays in getting the speedway approved and built that led a newspaper, the
Indianapolis Star, to once label France's proposed race track the "Pipe
Dream Speedway." But there it sat... two and a half miles of fresh blacktop,
shimmering in the midwinter Florida sun, with banked corners higher than the
tallest buildings in the towns some of those drivers had grown up in. For a
group of drivers used to running on short dirt and asphalt ovals, the awe must
have been tempered with a bit of fear as well. As Jimmy Thompson, a driver of
that era put it, "There have been other tracks that separated the men from
the boys. This is the track that's going to separate the brave from the weak
when the boys are gone."
Bill France had first proposed the Daytona Speedway
during the annual beach/road course race in 1954, and was confident enough in
his ability to get the track built, he told the drivers there that year they
would be racing on the speedway the very next year. In reality, it took a lot
longer than that. France's reasoning was sound. Far from the sleepy little
beach community that he had arrived in from Washington, Daytona Beach was
developing rapidly into a major beach resort. With the increased tourism and construction,
the days of the old course on the beach and the public highway were numbered.
Only a dedicated racing facility could keep alive the tradition of racing in
Daytona Beach. Far from paving the way for him, some politicians threw up all
sorts of zoning obstacles and objections. Bankers scoffed openly at the idea of
building such a track. Finally, a Racing and Recreation Committee was formed,
headed by France's former boss from the Buick/Cadillac agency where he had been
employed, J. Saxton Lloyd. The commission bought land for the project and gave
France a 99-year lease. No other public moneys were forthcoming. To raise money
to build the track, France sold 300,000 shares of stock at a dollar a share,
spent every dime he had, re-mortgaged his home, and borrowed $600,000 from oil
millionaire Clint Murchison. When that money ran out he began selling tickets
to a race at a facility that hadn't even been built yet, to raise additional
money to complete his project. But somehow the project was indeed completed,
and the racing community gathered in Daytona Beach in February of 1959 for the
first Speedweeks, with the crown jewel, the Daytona 500 slated to run on
February 22, 1959.
Posted awards for that first "500 Miles
Sweepstakes Race" were $62,760, with an additional $5000 bonus to the
winner if he drove a 1959 model car. France wanted shiny new cars, not battle
scarred veterans out there for his big race. Besides, the Grand National
hardtops, the Convertible division cars were also eligible to compete in that
Daytona 500, which is where the "sweepstakes" part of the race's name
came from. Trying to give the race an international flavor, France also offered
a $500 bonus to the highest finisher in a Jaguar, but there were no takers.
As an example of the cost of racing in those days,
Holman and Moody, later to become the kingpin of Ford factory racing, brought
eight spanking-new and race prepped Thunderbirds to the track for drivers
wishing to buy a car to race. The T-Birds included all the allowable safety equipment
of the day, two-point roll bars, seat and shoulder belts, the Ford "Severe
duty" suspension and spindles, a tachometer hose clamped to the steering
column, a 22 gallon gas tank, a blueprinted 430 cubic inch engine and an
asbestos floor mat both to keep the driver's feet cool and in the event of a
fire. Of course, buying one of those cars was a rich man's way into the race.
Each car cost a princely $5500. On the cheaper side of the coin, Lee Petty paid
$2500 for his 1959 Oldsmobile and worked on it in the family shop with his
sons, Richard and Maurice.
Then, as now, there was a full slate of races set to
run, not just the 500. France, after all, had to sell a lot of tickets to start
paying back his loans. The first event on the schedule was held February 7th,
1959, qualifying for the qualifying race that would precede the Daytona 500.
Only 13 cars showed up and 6 did not pass tech. Of the remaining seven cars,
Fireball Roberts in a '59 Pontiac was the fastest, at 140.581 miles per hour,
about 24 miles per hour faster than the pole speed at Darlington which had been
the circuit's fastest track to that point.
Also part of the festivities that week was an attempt
by Marshall Teague to break the world closed course speedway record at Daytona,
in an IndyCar of the day, modified with crude aerodynamic body work to form a
canopy over the driver and enclose the tires. On the very first day of testing,
the team was within 5 miles per hour of the record of 177.038 MPH and confident
with a little fine tuning and higher gears they could shatter the record
easily. Also running that day was an IndyCar, sent to drum up a little
attention for the IndyCar type race planned to be run at Daytona on the Fourth
of July later that year. Teague's plans met with disaster the morning of
February 11th. While he was working his way up to speed, the car lifted off the
ground and headed down the banking. When it struck the infield apron the car
launched into a series of five violent flips traveling over a quarter mile. The
car disintegrated and Teague, still strapped in his seat by his harnesses, was
thrown 150 feet beyond the wreck. By the time the rescue crew arrived, they
found Teague was already dead. He was the first man to lose his life at the
Daytona Speedway.
There were four rounds of qualifying for the Daytona
500 and the fastest time was set by Cotton Owens in another 59 Pontiac, who
blistered the new asphalt at 143.198 MPH. Remember, these were production 1959
cars, longer than most of today's pickups, complete with huge tail fins and a
half-ton of chrome trim present and accounted for; circus wagons to be honest,
and traveling well over two miles a minute.
The first head-to-head race on the Daytona Speedway on
February 20th, was a 100-mile qualifying race for the convertibles, which
incidentally competed with the roofs down. It turned out to be a remarkably
close race, with Shorty Rollins in a '58 Ford beating Marvin Panch by inches. Third place went to a young man piloting a
'57 Oldsmobile, by the name of Richard Petty.
Later that day, 38 hardtops lined up for their
qualifying race (there was only one that year) with Fireball Roberts on the
pole. Right from the outset, Fritz Wilson, in one of the store-bought Holman
and Moody T-Birds, took off like a rocket, but it was Bob Welborn,
in a '59 Chevy, that had the strongest horse. Both drivers found out some
peculiar things during the race. For one thing, with a nearly 100 cubic inch
advantage in displacement, the Ford should have been faster, but its awkward
aerodynamics slowed it down. But Wilson found by tucking right on Welborn's rear bumper he could travel along faster than he
had qualified. They didn't have a name for it yet, but Wilson had inadvertently
discovered what would become the black art of winning at Daytona, drafting.
Fireball Roberts, who became drafting's first master, was watching the curious
phenomenon carefully. Welborn tried to describe what
he had been doing for Wilson as "breaking wind" a name that
fortunately didn't stick.
Much as the Busch race is run on the Saturday before
the Daytona 500 now, there was a sportsman class race on Saturday the 21st. The
legendary chassis builder, Banjo Matthews, won that event. Junior Johnson had
been flagged in fourth place, but was disqualified when it was found his fuel tank
was way oversize. It was not the last time Junior would get caught bending
NASCAR's rules. Later that day there was a 25-lap consolation race for cars
that had yet to qualify for the 500, and to decide starting positions 41-59.
Jack Smith would sneak into the 500 by winning that event, and would go on to
finish seventh in the 500.
With all the preliminaries out of the way, it was
finally time for the first Daytona 500. Naysayers predicted no cars would
finish the race, as no car could take that sort of beating. They were certain
there would be terrible accidents, and the race would be boring, with one car
leaving the field laps and laps behind. Hopefully, those naysayers still bought
tickets to see the spectacle.
41,291 people attended the first Daytona 500 that day.
59 cars sat on pit road ready for battle, the morning sun gleaming off enough
chrome to plate the Statue of Liberty twice over, and more tail fins than the
Iraqi Air Force left littered over the desert during the Gulf War. Among the
unusual vehicles set to compete that day were a '58 Edsel convertible driven by
Paul Bass and a '59 Studebaker entered by Harold Smith. There was no flag stand
in those days, so the starter waved the green flag from the apron along pit
road and dove for cover as 59 bellowing cars headed for turn one, three and
four wide. Ken Marriott holds the dubious distinction of being the first driver
to drop out of the race and the first man to finish last in the Daytona 500,
when he popped an engine on the very first lap. Pole sitter Bob Welborn holds the honor of leading the first lap of the
first Daytona 500, and he treated the fans to a spirited battle with
"Tiger" Tom Pistone, who led the second and third laps, while wearing
a life preserver, so fearful was he of drowning in Lake Lloyd. Richard Petty,
the King of Stock Car Racing and Grand Poobah of the
Daytona 500, didn't fare so well that first Daytona 500. He lost an engine on
the 8th lap and wound up 57th. Fireball Roberts passed the lead duo and took a
comfortable lead before he lost a fuel pump and dropped out of the race early.
Jack Smith, who had only made the event in the consolation race, was left to
uphold the Pontiac brand's honor, and he did so convincingly in the middle
stages of the race, until several tire problems dropped him out of contention.
Attrition took its toll on the machines, but remarkably, there were none of the
high speed wrecks people had feared, and the first Daytona 500 was run without
a single caution flag. Late in the event, two contenders rose to the top of the
heap on a lap by themselves, Lee Petty in his "Styling by Stevie
Wonder" Oldsmobile, and Johnny Beauchamp in his “Buck Rogers"
Thunderbird. The two cars seemed evenly matched and the crowd was on their feet
as the two drivers swapped the lead eight times in the final 127 laps, running
door handle to door handle at 140 miles per hour. Coming out of turn four on
the final lap, the two cars were side by side heading for the checkers, and as
they took the flag, no one in the stands was sure who had won. After 500 miles
of flat out racing, the separation between the two cars was a matter of a foot
or so.
From where Bill France sat he thought Beauchamp had
won, and the Ford driver was instructed to take his car to victory lane. Lee
Petty angrily insisted he had won, and a group of reporters who had been right
at the start finish line backed up his contention. There were no photo finish
cameras in those days, though in the confusion of that afternoon Bill France
decided there would be before the next race. Even while Beauchamp was
celebrating in victory lane, Bill France was appealing to the press to submit
any photos they had of the finish, and he termed the outcome of the race
"unofficial". The batch of pictures NASCAR received proved inconclusive.
Some were taken a little before the finish line, and some taken a little beyond
it. It was clear that Beauchamp had been closing hard on Petty before the
finish line, and was in fact passed him a few feet beyond, but not whether he
had beat him to the line. Finally newsreel footage was obtained of the finish
from the Hearst organization. (Hearst as in Randolph and Rosebud, not the
shifter folks.) In those days, newsreel films still showed before a feature
movie in the theaters and Hearst executives had thought the movie house
audience might find the 500-mile race at the novel new track exciting. Little
did they know! After reviewing the film, it was clear that Petty had indeed won
the first Daytona 500, so three days after the fact he was awarded the victory.
The average speed for the caution free event was 135.521 miles per hour. To put
that in perspective, many cautions marred the 1988 Daytona 500 and the average
speed was only 137.531 miles per hour. Drivers have been returning to Daytona
Beach for the February classic every year now and this year will be the 40th
running of the most prestigious race on the schedule. It will cost a bit more
than $5500 to buy a competitive car, but it remains to be seen if the finish
will be as exciting as it was in the days of tail-finned and chrome dinosaurs.
AFTERMATH- An IndyCar style race was run at Daytona
April 4th of 1959. George Amick took the pole at a mind-boggling (for the time) 176.887 miles per
hour, just short of the closed course speed record. Jim Rathman
won the event, but while Amick was battling it out
for third place, he lost control of his car, slammed the wall, flipped over and
skidded 900 feet upside down. He became the second driver to lose his life at
Daytona. That race was the first of a scheduled double header, and the second
race did indeed run, though it was shortened from 100 laps to 50. Rathman won that event as well. The IndyCars
would never run at Daytona again. A scheduled IndyCar race set for July Fourth
was canceled, so Bill France hastily arranged a 250-mile Grand National race to
take its place. The event was dubbed the "Firecracker 250" in honor
of the country's birthday. Fireball Roberts and Joe Weatherly discovered
running "in the draft" they could leave the rest of the field in their
wake. Fireball won the first Firecracker, and as for the draft, well as they
say, the rest is history.
*Matt can no longer
field comments or email at Race Fans Forever. If you have comments or
questions, please leave them below and I’ll do my best to supply answers.
~PattyKay Lilley, Senior Editor.
