The Sands of Speed

I just got back from “Americas Greatest Race”, the big 500 mile opener at Daytona Beach Florida. I’m not a big NASCAR fan per se, but seeing them boys running 3 cars wide, 5 rows deep in a 205 mph ‘Super Speedway’ freight train is simply unbelievable. However, the real gem of my trip was visiting the Daytona Beach Racing Archives, held under lock & key in a nondescript building near the track. We spent hours looking at hundreds of photos, trophies and newspaper articles about land speed racing on that iconic beach, going all the way back to the turn of the century and lasting till the mid 1930s. Before there was El Mirage or Bonneville, there was Daytona. The relentless pursuit of speed was played out year after year on the hard-packed sand, and racing legends were born (and sometimes died) there.

Waking the coastal shoreline on a bright February morning, it’s hard to imagine someone trying to achieve two or three hundred miles per hour on such a narrow strip of land. A driver only had two alternative routes if something went really wrong: Into the water or into soft sand. The archives served as a reminder of how pioneering the early Daytona racers really were, and how far we’ve come.