Showdown at Daytona (English Edition)

NASCAR 75: How different was it compared to NASCAR today? Both quite a lot and very little, suggests Hal Higdon in this riveting book about the classic 1975 Daytona 500. “Showdown at Daytona” says it all.

In 1975, the winning driver earned $40,000. That sum would barely cover the motel bills for one of the major teams running Daytona today. At the 2012 Daytona 500, Champion Matt Kenseth pocketed $1,589,387. The last-place driver, David Regan (43rd) received a $267,637 paycheck! The world of NASCAR today is vastly different—but only if you look at the numbers. In so many cases, the Daytona 500 is much the same today as it was four decades ago.

Author Hal Higdon (whose son David, serves as Managing Director of Integrated Marketing Communications for NASCAR) offers all the details about one of Daytona’s most exciting races, one that featured Hall of Famers Richard Petty, Buddy Baker, Cale Yarborough and Bobby Allison hammering each other fender to fender, lap after thrill-filled lap. Add also Benny Parsons, a candidate in 2013 for the NASCAR Hall of Fame.

But more than the action on the track, Higdon captures the action around the track: King Richard striding through the pits wearing sun-glasses and cowboy hat, acting like he owned the place—and with seven Daytona wins under his belt at that point, he did! Meet also college-educated Roger Penske, preppy in his V-neck sweater and plaid button-down shirt. So different from many of the other drivers and owners, but also so much the same.

In 1975, NASCAR was on the verge of a sudden shift in image, perched on a springboard that soon would catapult stockcar racing into the mainstream of American sports, right up there with pro football, basketball, hockey and baseball. “Showdown At Daytona” reflects on the early years of a sport that began with moonshine merchants souping up jalopies to outrun the Feds on dirt-red roads in Georgia and Alabama. Soon the mechanics and gas-station workers, who knew their way about cars, began racing each other for fun as much as for money. In the years immediately after World War II, stockcar racing moved from short tracks in the Deepest South to the packed sands of Daytona Beach, then to a revolutionary, high-banked tri-oval speedway on the west side of town with grandstands that seated 60,000 fans. Was NASCAR founder Bill France overreaching? Events today suggest, no.

In 1975, stockcar racing remained a Good Ol’ Boy sport, not yet having expanded from its regional roots, the early superspeedways of Talladega, Darlington, Charlotte and, of course, Daytona. Now NASCAR hosts races near Chicago, Phoenix and Boston. Did even France visualize the drivers he nurtured might some day go racing in New Hampshire?

Yet for all its changes, NASCAR today remains much the same as NASCAR 75. King Richard still strolls through the pits wearing his signature sun-glasses and cowboy hat. Roger Penske looks less out of place now than four decades ago. But the fans packing the seats at Daytona still stand and outshout the engines as they witness the most dramatic moment in any sport: 40 cars, three and four abreast, rocketing out of Turn Four at speeds approaching 200 mph ready to take the green flag.

Hal Higdon captures it all in “Showdown At Daytona,” a book that soon after its publication earned the American Auto Racing Writers & Broadcasters Association (AARWBA) Award as Best Book of the Year. You will feel like you have been transported in a Time Machine back to the world of Richard and Buddy and Bobby and Cale and Benny. Sit back in your personal grandstand and enjoy one of NASCAR’s most exciting races.