Daytona 500

The Daytona 500 - also known as the Great American race - there is nothing else like it in all of stock car racing. While most race events take place over a two or three day period (practice, qualifying, and racing), the race events at Daytona the events that opens the NASCAR racing season goes on for two weeks - known as Speed weeks.

In 2008 NASCAR will celebrate 50 years of racing at Daytona on the track. The races first started on the beach itself. In 1959 the race moved to eight miles inshore to the tracks present location.

The racing season opens at Daytona with the Bud Shootout, qualifying, and the two qualifying races in the two weeks before the big race which culminates in the form of the Dayton 500.

Residents of Daytona, who are used to strange faces and filled hotel rooms, know when the racing season begins not by looking at the calendar or the feel of the cooler temperatures in the air but by the sound of racing engines roaring through the air when the 24 hours of Daytona kicks things off about the second weekend of the month of February with a road style race that lasts for an entire 24 hours period. At the conclusion of the 24 hour race the NASCAR community moves in and Speed weeks officially begins and the race is on for 36 races until a new champion is crowned in December. As a child I can remember hearing the cars as they raced around the track inside the house five miles away.