Thursday, November 6, 2014
We need to bring you up to date. We left Homestead on Tuesday making our way north about 350 miles to St. Augustine, encountering significant traffic until we got north of Miami. Our current home is Anastasia State Park which is located on an island in the Atlantic. St Augustine is a short distance west, but on the mainland. You can’t see them from our campsite, but can hear the ocean breakers. Pretty neat.
As you probably know, St. Augustine is the oldest city in the US. Ponce De Leon made landfall here in 1513. We visited Historic SA on Wednesday and will go again tomorrow, Friday. We will share our experience in the next installment. Today we went to Daytona and Ormond Beach.
The first stop was Daytona International Speedway, where we took a track tour. We have been to the 500 in February about ten years ago, but it was too zooey during race day to really see much. The tour was 90 minutes; visiting pit lane, the garages, tech inspection area, a suite, a pre-race driver’s meeting, and a lap around the track. We really enjoyed it.
Something we have not seen up close and is a relatively new innovation by NASCAR, now used by nearly all car racing series, is the SAFER barrier. As the next picture shows, instead of an outer wall of concrete or ARMCO rails and posts, this system consists of a movable steel wall with triangular Styrofoam spacers. When impacted the outer wall moves toward the concrete collapsing the foams blocks, thus reducing the impact energy. SAFER refers to Steel And Foam Energy Reduction. Drivers now walk away from 180 mph impacts with this wall system. Prior to the SAFER barriers in 2000, Dale Earnhardt crashed at Daytona coming out of turn 4. The sudden impact broke his neck and killed him.
They have been racing here since 1959 when the track was built. From about 1936 until 1958, they ran a race course that went down highway A1A then onto the beach, then back up on A1A. This brings us to our next stop, tracking down the location of where the old track was located and how could they race along the beach?
The first milestone was the north end of the course. Today a bar and grille is located at the site of the north turn. This was the point where they left the beach and came up onto A1A.
This view looks southward. The cars would be coming from that direction about 1 1/2 miles along the beach. The sand at the beach is very firm, you leave no footprints as you walk on it. But as you move away from the water it gets softer, so 1 to 2 foot ruts formed as they left the beach to access A1A.
Traveling to the south end turn, there is a marker.
We entered the beach and drove the truck along part of the course. Today the speed limit is 10 mph. Even with our balding tires, we easily made it down the beach, but getting back up onto the street was a little tricky.
We next drove back north along A1A. All along sections of the east coast you encounter A1A. It pretty much parallels US1, which runs along the east coast down to Key West. FL highway A1A has the hotels and resorts and provides the beach access.
Located about 10 miles north of the beach race course on A1A (Atlantic Ave.) at Kemp Street is the Streamline Hotel. It was in the Ebony Bar of the Streamline, in 1948, that Bill France met with drivers and sponsors to form the National Association for Stock Car Racing, NASCAR. It was to assure sponsors paid drivers the prize money promised.
Unfortunately, the hotel was closed. The sign outside says under renovation, but we heard the current owner may not have the money to bring it back. They continued to race on the beach until 1957, with another race in Darlington, NC. In 1958 France had built his new 2 1/2 mile Daytona Speedway on property next to the Daytona airport.
Now lets set our time machine back to 1902 to learn how they started running races on the beach. Remember, Flagler and others built big expensive hotels to attract the rich and famous to Florida’s east coast for winter vacation. Many of these people had the new rich man’s toy, the automobile. But the roads were so bad everywhere they didn’t have much opportunity to drive them. So, a guy named Hathaway promoted Ormond Beach as a place they could run their cars along the stretches of beach here.
The next thing you know, not only did they bring their cars, but they started to race them to see who had the fastest one and pretty soon the beach became known for setting speed records. In 1904 Flagler built the Ormond Garage, the “Gasoline Alley”, used for prepping the cars. Speed trial racing went on for several years and each year the speeds got higher and the beach run was extended to 7 miles. In 1935, the final year for speed trials, top speed reached was 276 mph. Ormond Beach became known as the “Birthplace of Speed”.
The original garage burnt down in 1976, along with all kinds of vintage cars and memorabilia. This is a replica located in the Ormond Speedway Park.
When stock car racing started in 1936, it was moved south about 10 miles where the beach was wider to accommodate side by side racing. So, its Ormond, Florida, not Indianapolis or Bonneville, that is the Birth of Speed and it was also the precursor of Stock Car Racing. So now you know the rest of the story!
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