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It's Daytona Day


maddmaxx

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10 minutes ago, maddmaxx said:

 not a state of weather..............unless it rains in Daytona.

Weather should be OK. Partly cloudy through day and light winds. Showers starting at 4PM with 40% coverage, increasing to 50% at 8PM. Traffic is always a bear getting home with bumper to bumper on the two Interstates. Now make them slip and slide demolition derby's and should be fun. There is a reason I keep out of that mess and totally bypassed Daytona yesterday on a trip to the beach. I learned that early. When first graduated from college, my first job was a juvenile probation officer with my office in what are now some shops directly across the street from the Speedway. With traffic management, there was no way I could get to my office if I needed to on race day, and the leadup days for time trials were a nightmare.

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1 minute ago, Tizeye said:

Weather should be OK. Partly cloudy through day and light winds. Showers starting at 4PM with 40% coverage, increasing to 50% at 8PM. Traffic is always a bear getting home with bumper to bumper on the two Interstates. Now make them slip and slide demolition derby's and should be fun. There is a reason I keep out of that mess and totally bypassed Daytona yesterday on a trip to the beach. I learned that early. When first graduated from college, my first job was a juvenile probation officer with my office in what are now some shops directly across the street from the Speedway. With traffic management, there was no way I could get to my office if I needed to on race day, and the leadup days for time trials were a nightmare.

I remember being there with spare cars in trailers stored as far away as Orlando in hotel parking lots.  I flew home one Daytona weekend on a Friday and walking out to the terminal was like swimming upstream.  There was a wall to wall set of NASCAR fans coming into the Orlando Airport from all over the country.  It's strange, that for all that I like this race, I've never attended one live.  IMO the television coverage is better than sitting there.  I get all the "real" experience I need at smaller local tracks.

One thing I had to do when I was staying in Orlando however was to go to the track in Daytona and fork out my money for a ride at speed in one of the Richard Petty Driving Experience stock cars.  No matter what I did in my limited racing career I was never going to get to race there.  It was worth every penny as there is no way to get that feeling from watching.  At 170 mph one gets the feeling that Daytona is little more than a two lane road.  Having watched them race 3 wide gives me an appreciation for how good those drivers really are.  The worst there are better than you and I by an order of magnitude or so.

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This post got me curious...whatever happened to my old office. Originally, it was the "GE Building" with the majority housing State HRS (welfare and family services) were we (DYS - Division of Youth Services) had the eastern end. Now it is totally commercial and for years "Boater's World" occupied the DYS office area until they went bankrupt several years ago. Went in, and in relation to the front door, my desk was where the cashier island was. 

Fast forward to today and Google maps. Corner of Speedway Blvd and Fentress Blvd (formerly a dead end street after 2 blocks). The placed a Checkers on the corner blocking direct view and maps can't turn down Fentress, but can see the secondary door along the side of the building used by staff. Through the trees around Checkers, it is clear there is a "For Lease" sign in the front window.

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31 minutes ago, maddmaxx said:

It's strange, that for all that I like this race, I've never attended one live.  IMO the television coverage is better than sitting there.  I get all the "real" experience I need at smaller local tracks.

Same here, and really, the 500 is a short race made for TV.

A few years back I went to the 24 Hours at Daytona. The BIL of a doctor my wife worked with was Wayne Taylor who owned a racing team and was part of the 24 hour driver team. That was an interesting race that was beyond the experiences of the local ford vs chevy (and occasional Mopar) at the local track. Sound was amazing from the low pitched rumble of the big block V8's to the high pitched whine of the Porsches and Ferraris. They run a similar 24 hours on the old airport at Sebring, but at least Daytona has the banking to really support speed with the driver's skill. 

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35 minutes ago, maddmaxx said:

I've never attended one live

I've only seen NASCAR live at Michigan. There was a stretch of aboot 7 years in the 2000's that I would attend. Like anything IMO, live makes it more interesting. And listening to the drivers' radios w/ a scanner is pretty damn cool uncensored entertainment :D

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42 minutes ago, maddmaxx said:

I remember being there with spare cars in trailers stored as far away as Orlando in hotel parking lots.  I flew home one Daytona weekend on a Friday and walking out to the terminal was like swimming upstream.  There was a wall to wall set of NASCAR fans coming into the Orlando Airport from all over the country.  It's strange, that for all that I like this race, I've never attended one live.  IMO the television coverage is better than sitting there.  I get all the "real" experience I need at smaller local tracks.

One thing I had to do when I was staying in Orlando however was to go to the track in Daytona and fork out my money for a ride at speed in one of the Richard Petty Driving Experience stock cars.  No matter what I did in my limited racing career I was never going to get to race there.  It was worth every penny as there is no way to get that feeling from watching.  At 170 mph one gets the feeling that Daytona is little more than a two lane road.  Having watched them race 3 wide gives me an appreciation for how good those drivers really are.  The worst there are better than you and I by an order of magnitude or so.

I loved the experience of taking my kart to Pocono and getting in a few laps before the engine seized. It was a sprint not enduro kart so the long distance was more than it could handle. The feeling of slingshotting around someone by using their draft was so fun!  I saw an enduro race at summit point and that looked like an excellent track. 

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49 minutes ago, bikeman564™ said:

I've only seen NASCAR live at Michigan. There was a stretch of aboot 7 years in the 2000's that I would attend. Like anything IMO, live makes it more interesting. And listening to the drivers' radios w/ a scanner is pretty damn cool uncensored entertainment :D

We had the experience of going to New Hampshire for a Nascar race as guests of Toyota and with womaxx as one of the Toyota truck drivers during driver intro.  The three of us had special all access passes to anyplace in the facility that any fan (and many officials) could go to.  We left CT at 0dark 30 and got there at about 8am with time to go visit friends in the camper park, walk all around the facility, hang out at the Toyota pavilion, visit the pits and then watch the race.  We still left 7 laps before the finish (it was in little doubt who was going to win as NH is not a drafting track) so we beat the traditional awful traffic jam leaving New Hampshire.

Kudos to the state police however who block off every side street from the track to the highway for a distance of several miles while they turn a 4 lane street into 3 out an 1 in.

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50 minutes ago, bikeman564™ said:

They race road courses in rain. I don't think IRL races in rain on ovals either :dontknow:My guess is speed/safety.

Motorcycles, F-1, sidecars, Indy car all race in the rain and they don't have windshields. I would love to see a NASCAR rain race 

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1 hour ago, BR46 said:

Motorcycles, F-1, sidecars, Indy car all race in the rain and they don't have windshields. I would love to see a NASCAR rain race 

Most road races have run off areas and sand traps to stop sliding cars.  NASCAR and IRL tracks have walls.  I suspect that's why both of those organizations have wet tires for road races and dry for ovals.

F1 has wet tires for all tracks but I don't remember the last time they had a wet race at one of the street circuits.  They do have significantly more down force than stock cars so perhaps there's something to that.

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The first race I remember watching was the Daytona 500 in 1969 or 70. The Daytona Chargers (and maybe Superbirds) were otherworldly to a 7 year old. I started trying to learn more and was disappointed if Wide World of Sports didn’t have some kind of racing. I remained a NASCAR fan off and on until recent years. The spec car aerodynamics make it so hard to have a good race. 

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Just now, groupw said:

The first race I remember watching was the Daytona 500 in 1969 or 70. The Daytona Chargers (and maybe Superbirds) were otherworldly to a 7 year old. I started trying to learn more and was disappointed if Wide World of Sports didn’t have some kind of racing. I remained a NASCAR fan off and on until recent years. The spec car aerodynamics make it so hard to have a good race. 

The other side of the coin is dominance by one or another manufacturer.  The original price on my Daytona was $3500.  They cost $6500 to assemble but the manufacturer would take any sort of loss to make them legal.  Before the Daytona, Ford was set to dominate with the Torino Talladega another one of a kind speciality car.

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25 minutes ago, maddmaxx said:

The other side of the coin is dominance by one or another manufacturer.  The original price on my Daytona was $3500.  They cost $6500 to assemble but the manufacturer would take any sort of loss to make them legal.  Before the Daytona, Ford was set to dominate with the Torino Talladega another one of a kind speciality car.

I think it’s a side of racing I miss. I would love to go back to the “body in white” days where the basic chassis and bodywork comes from the factory. Give them a rough template of dimensions. These are your tires, an air inlet and x amount of fuel for a given distance and go have fun, boys! Innovative thinking should be rewarded instead of penalized. 

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2 hours ago, groupw said:

I think it’s a side of racing I miss. I would love to go back to the “body in white” days where the basic chassis and bodywork comes from the factory. Give them a rough template of dimensions. These are your tires, an air inlet and x amount of fuel for a given distance and go have fun, boys! Innovative thinking should be rewarded instead of penalized. 

Sponsors don't like that.  There aren't enough good teams to go around that way and NASCAR became too expensive for low sponsor racing.  NASCAR has become an alldasame sport so that there is more opportunity for money.

They might have done it wrong though because they are suffering from low fan turnout and you can look for sections of the grandstand covered by giant tarps to hide them. (empty)

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12 hours ago, groupw said:

The first race I remember watching was the Daytona 500 in 1969 or 70.

The first race I ever listened to (they were only on the radio in those days) was the 1964 Daytona 500.  Richard Petty won and Plymouths finished 1-2-3.  The first year for the 426 Hemi.  At the time, my dad owned a 63 Plymouth Fury.  I was ecstatic.  :)

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I was happy watching a rerun of last year's race. Just as exciting and just as surprising. 

But, yeah, ovals and rain are a HORRIBLE mix.  Road courses are where it's at for rain, but either watching folks drive 50% regular speeds or being under caution a whole race would be pretty sucky. Keep the ovals on relatively dry pavement, and let the road course stuff have the inclement weather.

On 2/16/2020 at 9:46 AM, maddmaxx said:

Fumes.

Noise.

Maybe someday for electric cars

Is that within the next five years or longer? I doubt they are gonna build a dome over Daytona, especially if it is only once in decades that it matters, but eNASCAR has to be in the works, and I wonder if it will be alongside the current cars, or will be a separate series soon?

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I’m sure this isn’t a spoiler to anyone who posted here previously, but just in case I won’t use any driver’s names. Was the crash the fault of the injured driver, or the guy who spun him into the wall? It looked like there was a clear effort by the lead drive to cut off the lane the lower car tried to take, which makes me think it was the fault of the guy who crashed, but I don’t watch much motor sports.

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