Sports Car Racing & NASCAR Beat The Beach These Two Weekends
While most cities ease into a New Year, Daytona Beach, FL, goes into it full throttle.
This small beach town in the northeast part of the Sunshine State hosts two major motorsports events within a few weeks the end of January and the beginning of February. The first is the 24 Hours of Daytona, a sports car endurance race in which the cars (but not the drivers; there are four per team) run constantly from Saturday at 3 p.m., until Sunday at 3 p.m.
It attracts drivers from all over the world, including those in Formula 1.
This is only a buildup to the Daytona 500, known as the Super Bowl of stock car racing. No other sport has its biggest event as its first of the year, but that’s the way it’s alway been and will always be for NASCAR.
The Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona in 2019 is Jan. 26-27 and the Daytona 500 is Sunday, Feb 17. Both are held at Daytona International Raceway, a high-banked oval about 15 miles from the beach (which can drive on, by the way, and where the 500 was born). The Rolex 24 utilizes an infield road course while NASCAR races entirely on the oval.
I’ve been to the 24 Hours but not the 500. I was doing PR for a manufacturer that had several cars in the race and I – as well as other PR team members – were up the entire time. And that included the pre-race “warm-up,” racing’s equivalent of batting practice before a baseball game or players stretching before a basketball or football game.
All told, we were up for 36 straight hours. And that did not count the flight back to L.A. Needless to say, we did not get a lot of beach time during that trip.
Two-time Formula 1 World Champion Fernando Alonso loves the atmosphere of the 24 Hours because it’s something he never experiences in F1, in which the cars are kept in garages and the drivers away from the fans.
“The fans get really close to the teams, to the drivers, to the cars,” he said. “They can even touch the car if they want.
“It’s just something unthinkable in Formula 1 or racing in Europe, so I think that’s the nice part of this atmosphere and this race. I know it will be even bigger with all the fans here and how close they are on pit lane as well. When you jump in the car (to drive), you’re still signing autographs and taking pictures even with the helmet on, waiting for the car to come to pit lane. Sometimes you need to tell them you are in a critical moment and you should be ready to jump in.
“But at same time if you embrace that and enjoy that, it is a very nice event and very nice emotion to see all the passion from the fans when they see the cars.’’
It’s kind of the same way at the 500. Fans can get up close to the cars and line up for autograph sessions with the drivers.
And while it may seem odd to some, people go to Daytona Beach for these two events in January and February not to go to the beach, but to go to the races.
Cheers!
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