NASCAR racing began on the beach
Posted: Fri February 13, 1998 at 7:01 PM ET
On a January day in 1902, two vacationers named Ransom Olds and Alexander Winton strolled onto the beach at Ormond, north of Daytona. They gazed south, noting the wide, level, hard-packed beach. Yes, the two inventors agreed. This would be the place to experiment with the newfangled notion of speed. They ordered their hand-built automobiles shipped in by rail, and ran them down the beach at a blazing 57 miles per hour.
The speed craze was on. Racing would arrive at Le Mans in 1906, and Indianapolis in 1909. But for more than 30 years, the world's land speed records were set here -- until Sir Malcolm Campbell and the other speed demons found a safer place, out in Utah, called the Bonneville Salt Flats.
Then, enter Big Bill France -- onto this same stretch of beach -- in 1935. He was an itinerant mechanic, headed from Washington, D.C. to Miami. But as he drove down U.S. Highway 1, something possessed him to turn left on Granada Boulevard, toward the ocean. As he drove out onto this beach, and down it, he was captivated by its history. He decided to settle in Daytona, with his wife Anne and toddler son Bill Jr.
Big Bill began driving in, and then organizing and promoting, primitive stock car races on this beach. And in December of 1947, France called a meeting of racing moguls to organize what he wanted to call the National Stock Car Racing Association. But at the meeting, Atlanta race car builder Red Vogt suggested an alternative: the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing -- NASCAR.
By February of 1948, NASCAR was ready to rumble on the beach. But cottage owners along here complained about the noise and the crowds, so the racecourse was moved several miles down the beach, south of Daytona, for NASCAR's inaugural event. It was for modified cars. What we know as Winston Cup wouldn't begin until 1949, when it was called the Strictly Stock Division.
In 1959, racing left the beach for good and moved inland, to France's revolutionary, high-banked Daytona International Speedway. Big Bill France died in 1992. He didn't get to see the spectacular boom in NASCAR popularity of recent years, but his vision made it happen. And it all began here, where Granada Boulevard meets the sea, at the Birthplace of Speed.
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