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FAREWELL, FIRECRACKER: Daytona’s summertime NASCAR race on the move

By ken.willis@news-jrnl.comPosted Jun 29, 2019 at 10:39 PM Updated Jun 29, 2019 at 10:40 PM


After 61 years parked in early July, next year’s 2020 400-miler will be run on Aug. 29.

When Aug. 29, 2020 rolls around and NASCAR throws the switch on Daytona’s summertime 400-miler, things will likely look and feel as they have for most of the past 60 years. Especially the past 20-plus years of nighttime racing here.

It’ll be hot, the skies might be threatening, drivers will be leery of a big crash. The overriding vibe, however, will be decidedly different.

Goodbye, flag-inspired bikini. So long, Uncle Sam tank-top.

PHOTOS: Daytona’s Last July Race

“The 29th of August” just doesn’t bring the same inspiration as Fourth of July weekend.


“July in Daytona” has been part of NASCAR since 1959. It changed twice in a big way: In 1988 when the race was moved from July 4 to the first Saturday in July, and in 1998 when it was moved to nighttime after the installation of lights at the Speedway.


Through the first half of its 60-year existence, the race had “Firecracker” in its title and the engines cranked on July 4 at either 10 or 11 a.m. The race would end before lunch got cold and, soon thereafter, almost everyone would be in the waves.

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PHOTOS: Daytona’s Last July Race

“At 2 o’clock, we’d be at the beach,” says longtime racer Jimmy Means, who ran 17 July races at Daytona between 1976-93. “I have a picture of me holding my son (Brad) on the pier when he was 6 weeks old. He’s 42 now.”


NASCAR’s schedule, in earlier years, often had the Firecracker race sitting in the middle of a lengthy mid-season break. Sometimes there were two weekends off before and after the 400.


That type of respite disappeared as the schedule grew from a low of 29 races to today’s 36 (38 if you count the two exhibitions) and as the TV partners began requesting and/or dictating scheduling needs.


This week at the Speedway

Thursday

1:05-1:55 p.m.: Xfinity Series practice

2:05-2:55: Cup Series practice

3:05-3:55: Xfinity Series practice

4:05-4:55: Cup Series practice

Friday

3:35 p.m.: Xfinity Series qualifying

5:05: Cup Series qualifying

7:30: Circle K Firecracker 250 Xfinity Series race

Saturday

7:30 p.m.: 61st annual Coke Zero Sugar 400

‒ More information: DaytonaInternationalSpeedway.com






Throw in the 21st century revamping of NASCAR’s championship protocol, as well as blanket network coverage, and the current desire to reverse the downward trend in attendance and TV ratings, and you get this: The final July edition of Daytona’s summertime thriller, currently known as the Coke Zero Sugar 400.


In the first big effort to shuffle the scheduling landscape, the 400 leaves its mid-season, Fourth of July-themed home to become the 26th race on a 36-race schedule. Next year, it will be the final race of NASCAR’s 26-race regular season and will officially set the table for the 10-race playoffs.


A lot of tradition will be stuffed in the moving van, as will boxes and boxes of memories.


‘The only ocean’


“The Fourth of July, that’s where I always thought that race should stay,” says Geoff Bodine, a NASCAR regular from 1982-2000. “We loved it that way. We’d bring the (two) boys down, stay at the beach, go swimming. You’d get out in that surf ... man, that was good exercise. And it was nice that time of year; the water was warm.


“We liked it so much, we ended up buying a condo there,” adds Bodine, who now lives about 90 minutes south in Malabar.


Eddie Wood, second-generation owner of the famed Wood Brothers Racing, believes he was 10 years old, in 1962, when he first tagged along to Daytona in July with his father, the late NASCAR Hall of Famer Glen Wood, whose race team was born and based in tiny Stuart, Virginia.


Marvin Panch, who moved to this area during his racing career, was driving the Wood Brothers car that year, and Eddie Wood remembers seeing the ocean for the first time as he hit the surf with Panch’s kids, Marvette and Richie. But another 1962 “first” stuck with Wood just as much.


“I got introduced to Steak ’n Shake down there in ’62,” Wood says. “I was an instant fan. I was big on the burgers and fries, and I always go back when we’re down there and eat the same thing now that I’d eat then. That one stuck with me.”


Eddie Wood first saw an ocean here, but his contemporary Kyle Petty can top that.






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“I was born on June 2 (1960) and we were in Daytona for the race in July. We just went; that’s what we always did,” says Petty. “I’ve joked about this, but I was quite a bit older before I realized that the only beach in America wasn’t in Daytona Beach. That was the only ocean we ever saw. Once a year, we’d see the ocean. And I thought that was the only one.”


Richard Petty and wife Lynda would pack their four kids into the station wagon and leave North Carolina for Daytona Beach each summer. Given the open schedule on both sides of the Firecracker, it’d turn into a family vacation, headquartered at different times at the Royal Beach and Sea Dip hotels on the beach.


Richard, from 1959 forward, would always celebrate his July 2 birthday in Daytona Beach.


Every year at some point, family remembers recall, Richard would get the tops of his wide feet sunburned and have to painfully shove them into his racing boots the next day at the track. At any given time at the hotel, King Richard could look around and see lots of familiar faces — David Pearson, Bobby and Donnie Allison, as well as other drivers and their families.


“The Sea Dip was where I learned to swim,” Kyle Petty recalls. “I also remember that Donnie Allison was a diving phenomenon. He’d come back from the racetrack in the afternoon, and we’d all be mesmerized by his diving — full gainers, half-gainers ... he was a diving fool.”


Over time, as bigger money and wider fame came to NASCAR, drivers found it more convenient to stay in their luxury motorcoaches at the racetracks each week, fenced off from the fans and light years away from the old way of doing things.


“We loved it the way it was,” says Bodine. “I ended up living down here in Florida, which tells you how much I liked it.”

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‘Sacred date’


There was a time when moving Daytona’s summertime race away from the national holiday wasn’t even up for discussion. NASCAR and Speedway founder Bill France Sr. planted the race there originally as a replacement for an Indy-car race that never materialized, but he quickly realized its popularity and future potential, and the tradition continued after his son took over the business.


“As I recall, there was little conversation about moving the date. It was as sacred as the Daytona 500 date,” says Robin Braig, who was president of Daytona International Speedway from 2002-2010. “I never thought, back then, that they would give up a holiday weekend at Daytona.


“I remember Bill France Jr. reminding my sales team, the Fourth of July and NASCAR in Daytona was ‘as American and patriotic as apple pie.’”


Along with all the tradition and whatever meaning you might attach to the July race weekend, perhaps best of all, it was highly profitable for many of those involved.


Before joining the Speedway’s parent company, International Speedway Corp., Braig worked in marketing for Anheuser-Busch. He oversaw A-B’s NASCAR effort, including the marketing of Hendrick Motorsports’ No. 25 Budweiser-branded team with driver Ken Schrader.


“The July race was a beer marketer’s dream event,” Braig says. “It was a major sports event on a holiday weekend in the middle of peak beer-selling months. And it was in Florida. We also had one of the best beer salesmen ever — Kenny Schrader — in our arsenal. He already knew every bartender in town.”


Locally, however, the area’s tourism promoters have long suggested they’d be better served with moving the race to a different slot on the calendar. The loyal fan base that still attends races will come to the 400 regardless of where it sits, but luring other family vacationers to the beach, on or around the Fourth of July, would be easier without working around a major auto race.


The move could benefit all parties, according to Kate Holcomb, director of communications for the Daytona Beach Area Convention & Visitors Bureau.


“It creates an opportunity for us to gear more messaging for the big Independence Day weekend to families, who will be coming during our strong summer season,” she says. “And it will give race fans and other visitors a solid reason to plan their Daytona Beach-area vacations for August, a month that offers additional (hotel) capacity.


“We look forward to seeing success in both time frames.”


Going forward, to late-August of next year and wherever future schedules find the 400, the race community will adjust and show up at the scheduled time. But it could be a while before NASCAR’s elders stop getting the urge to pack for Daytona Beach as the Fourth of July approaches.


“Always, from the time I was a kid until now, the Fourth of July meant you were in Daytona,” Wood says. “I went down there as a kid. I went as an adult. This year when I go, I’m a grandfather. Been going down there a long time.


“It’s gonna seem really odd not doing that next year. But I get it, that’s just the way it worked out.”




The 400, through the years


April 4, 1959: Less than two months after the first Speedweeks at Daytona International Speedway, Bill France Sr. hosts a pair of 40-lap USAC races for Indy-style cars, three months before his scheduled USAC race on the Fourth of July at Daytona. But the open-wheel cars aren’t suited for Daytona’s high banks and speed, and veteran racer George Amick is killed in a crash on the final lap of the first race. Plans for a USAC race are scrapped and a second NASCAR date for Daytona will fill the void.


July 4, 1959: Hometown racing hero Fireball Roberts wins the inaugural Firecracker 250, driving a Pontiac built by fellow Daytonan Smokey Yunick. Fireball was nicknamed not for a race car fire.......but for his fast ball in younger years as a ball player.......and is
buried in a cemetary just East of the Daytona Speedway.

It is one of the stops of the bus tour run by the living Legends of Auto Racing.
https://www.tamparacing.com/forums/e...h-florida.html


July 4, 1963: The race is lengthened by 60 laps and 150 miles, and Fireball Roberts also wins the first Firecracker 400.


July 4, 1984: Richard Petty edges Cale Yarborough and makes the Firecracker 400 his 200th (and final) career win, in front of President Ronald Reagan.


July 2, 1988: The race moves from the Fourth of July to the first Saturday of July. Bill Elliott wins the final 400 with “Firecracker” in the name.

Oct. 17, 1998: The 400 becomes a nighttime race after the installation of lights at Daytona. The first nighttime 400, however, is postponed until October due to summertime wildfires in Volusia County.

July 5, 2008: After Pepsi’s 23-year run, Coca Cola takes over as presenting sponsor of the 400.


July 6, 2019: The 400 ends its 61-year run as a “Fourth of July” event. Next year in 2020, the race moves to late August.

.....and you heard it here first on TampaRacing.com
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senor honda

Decades ago when I was stationed at MacDill AFB, during late 60's we would ride in Triolio's Corvette convertible
to Daytona for the Firecracker 400. We got sunburned, but it was a great race and we had real seats
just before the finish line.

Years later on I got into the sports car scene and would work as a corner worker during the Paul Revere 250 which started at midnight July 3rd and we got passes that allowed us to go ANYWHERE at the speedway........including watching the 400. The workers for the 250 were supplied by Central Florida Region of SCCA.

There were times we would watch the 400 from the infield on a piece of plywood fastened to Marvin Wagner's VW bus.
It was great for rotating around as the race was running. I don't know how we kept from falling off the roof.

Marvin Wagner was a member of MacDill Sports Car Club even though he worked as a cop in Largo and eventually for a car parts
company on Florida Ave in Tampa. We would get a 10% racers discount by saying the items were for the "Horseless Carriage Buggy Works".

The last time I saw Wagner was at an autocross at the old engineering parking lot at USF......where he was racing a Lotus Cortina......
that had belonged to British Racer Jim Clark.....
still painted British Racing Green with a white stripe and had an honest twin can lotus engine.

Over time there were many Firecracker 400's, but as I got further into the sports car scene, there were less of them.
I still have the Firecracker 400 patch on my Macdill Sports Car Club jacket......along with a fortune in rare patches
of car clubs and race tracks that no longer exist.
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