![]() From the very first Daytona 500, won by Lee Petty in a three-way photo finish, those high banks, so steep that it is hard to walk up them, proved a favorable venue for wide-open stock car racing, and Daytona kicked-off the growth of NASCAR as we know it today.ĭaytona was also the first multi-use facility, with a 3.56-mile road circuit incorporating the infield and most of the oval. Before Daytona, Indianapolis was the only American oval track longer than 1.25 miles, and most racing took place on dirt ovals a mile or less in length. ![]() As a replacement for the old beach road course a few miles east, the the high-banked, 2.5-mile Florida tri-oval represented the leading edge of a wave of construction of big, paved speed palaces. No one could have known it then, but when Daytona International Speedway opened in 1959, it marked the beginning of a new era in American motorsport. ![]()
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