That Daytona tour is really cool... I went on it 8 years ago! I hear they've added a thing now wehre you can go see the press box and they stop on the finish line and let you take your picture there..... ididn't get to do that stuff.

 

We didn't get too do the finish line. It was a hot track as they called it. Go-karts were racing. Those really looked funny on that big track, especially on the high banks. They looked like bob sleds. Took a pic or two, I will try to post it but you will have to look hard since they are small. Pics from press Box and Kenseth's winniing car.

 

I like the seat bolsters they added on. I like that the column shifter is still in the car. The roll bar and steering wheel look like they are wrapped with electrical tape and I also love fireball's choice of footwear. I think they are penny loafers

 

X2 on the penny loafers!


(Nice pics Jerry)

 

Those are some cool pictures, Jerry!! I didn't know you were in Florida. Are you going back by way of the piedmont region of NC by any odds?


Footwear back in the day on drivers was always interesting to me. Dave Marcis was the pioneer of wearing wing tipped shoes. Burning your ankles on the floor was a really common problem even through the 1980s. Marcis had a friend tell him to wear leather shoes. he only had his wing tip dress shoes with him and he wore them.... and after that, wing tipped leather shoes was all he would race in, even until he retired in the late 90's. He nearly won the title in like '73 but Petty beat him....

That is indeed electrical tape. However, there was some type of foam they wrapped around the wheel too. Most drivers preferred to wrap the steering wheel themselves or have a crew member who had raced before wrap it because it was pretty easy not to do it right and have it start coming apart and the lose ends sticking to your hands while you were racing. I guess they also figured they wouldn't be shifting enough for the column shifter or floor shifter to matter one way or another. Crazy folks!

that wheel is basically what most drivers ran through the 80s.... just a factory or some other style steel ringed wheel with plastic coating, then a foam pad around the plastic wrapped in electric tape. Until here recently, when Max Papis developed the Momo wheel, which is just a piece of carbon fiber and energy absorbing foam designed to transmit less vibrations through the steering column to your hand and also do less damage to your body in an accident. It's what about 99% of drivers now run.

 

The original dash is cool in today's pic. It must have been nice to have a gas gauge and speedometer to keep you from getting busted speeding on pit row (that was a joke).

Those go-karts are ridiculously tiny to run a Daytona. How long does it take them to turn a lap?

 

Not sure brent but they said they do 155mph.
Duane, we are going straight back up I75 to Tn and visit a friend of mine...

 

I wonder if theyll let you run a 60 mph barstool racer around it?

 

I wouldn't want to be in a go kart going that fast if anything even began to go wrong......

 

Classic NASCAR Photo of Today: Wendell Scott, the only African American to win a NASCAR race (1963, Jacksonville) and the only African American to ever finish in the top 10 in points (4 years running, plus barelly missed it another 6), sits on his blue #34 at Dover, De in 1970, 1971 sometime.





Yeah, there are a couple of a Monte Carlo's in here somewhere....