Jared's Paper
Jared Herndon
November 20, 2007
ENC 1101 Tues./Thurs. 1:30-2:45
The World of Racing
Imagine being a racecar driver blasting down the high banks of Daytona International Speedway, at 200 hundred miles per hour! Or going 120 miles per hour on the edge of the Rocky Mountains sliding into a blind turn, and then speeding off the other way. Lastly, imagine yourself drifting sideways through an entire course, never letting the car get strait. Hi, my name is Jared and today, I am going to be informing you about NASCAR racing, Rally racing, and Drift racing.
NASCAR all started back when William Henry Getty France Sr. also known as Big Bill went to the Daytona Beach city council and proposed an idea to them. His proposal was that they should have “stock” automobile races on Daytona Beach. The race would be held on a 1.6 mile track that traveled north on the sandy banks of Daytona Beach and then south bound onto highway A1A. The city council agreed because they were very desperate for tourist to come back to the Daytona beaches. Twenty-seven racers showed up on March 8, 1936 for the five thousand dollar purse. Twenty thousand fans filled the Daytona Beach shores to watch the first ever “stock” car event. The race was a complete failure, the cars got bogged down in the soft sand and the fans bypassed the ticket booths and poured over the sandy dunes. The city of Daytona lost Twenty-two thousand dollars on this race. Big Bill finished fifth in the race and went home directly after to start thinking of a better plan for his race track. Fifteen years later Big Bill had redesigned the Daytona Beach race track and had another race on it. February 15, 1948 marked the date for the first official NASCAR racing event. Robert “Red” Byron won the first official NASCAR race on the Daytona Beach race track that was 2.2 miles long, but it still went from the sand to the asphalt of A1A. Red had to have his left leg strapped to the clutch...
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