Daytona International Speedway

Lee, as some of you know, is a big NASCAR fan.  So today we set off for a tour of the Daytona International Speedway, and took a trolley tour where we were actually driven around the race course, although backwards, on the apron, and certainly much slower!  Lee was thrilled with the whole thing.

There were two things that struck me about the Speedway:  1) size - it is humungous!! and 2) most of the race course is very steeply sloped, much more so than it looks on TV.  Race courses aren't my thing, but I will do my best in the following photos.

Lee tried to take photos that would show just how steep the slopes in the turns are.  The two big turns at either end are at a 30% slope.

 All parts of the course are sloped - even the portions that appear to be straight are sloped at 3%.  The tour guide said that because of gravity, a car must be traveling at least 95 mph on the 30% slope, or gravity will pull the car down.  Pretty interesting!

Size is a little harder to show in photographs.  The Speedway covers 480 acres, I think the guide said.  The grandstand is six stories high.

There is a race course inside the race course:

There is a lake inside the race course, for boat racing and water skiing!!

The stands across from the main grandstand look a mile away!!  I don't think they are that far, but they do look it.

Here are the pit stops.  They were empty today, but you can see the skid marks from fast starts:

We were able to go inside the winner's circle, and the tour guide was kind enough to take photos of each of us with our own cameras.  I would call that excellent service!  Lee loved this part.

Another view of the winner's circle:

And looking across the winner's circle at the main grandstand:

Does this one give you an idea of size?

Lee liked this - the car that was the winner of the most recent Daytona 500:

Here's the trophy with the names of all the winners over the years:

There, that wasn't so difficult, was it?  A change of pace definitely, but I found it all very interesting.  A different world, for sure!

We went to Ponce Inlet afterwards, because the original Daytona racetrack was on the beach on the ocean side of the peninsula of that inlet.  This was back in the 1950's, if any of you can remember back that far.  There are no signs of the original race track today, but it is part of its history.