February 14th is Valentines Day for some people. For others with a rather different love, of cars, it is the day of the running of the 52nd annual Daytona 500 at Daytona International Raceway Florida.

Here, one of our regular clients tells us of his visit in 2009.

The race is 500 miles long which is 200 laps of a banked oval with cars, which look very similar to the every day American drivers, circulating at 200 miles per hour. ‘Awesome’ as the Americans say! As my wife and I had done the trip to Florida many times before we hired a Mitsubishi Gallant from Budget Rent a Car through Carhireflorida.net. The nice touch with carhireflorida.net is that Elle is able to pre-register the car before we arrive and we go straight to the garage at Orlando International Airport thus avoiding all the long lines at the rental desk which is not what you want after a 9 hour flight. The other nice touch about this system is that you get none of the high pressure selling trying to upgrade the car etc. Literally within 2 minutes you are underway and I would recommend everybody to do this. [Thank you for the plug John!]

A few days were spent before the race at our house in Kissimmee doing maintenance jobs etc before 2 very good friends of ours joined us to go and see the race. They both race back in the UK with Dave sharing my car in speed hill climbs. After a couple of days showing them around the sites it was time to go racing.

We left home on the Sunday morning, after a leisurely breakfast, at 9.00 am and enjoyed an equally leisurely drive on the Greeneway toll road to Sanford and then on the Interstate 4 to Daytona. For the previous 4 days rain has been forecast for the race but we have a nice warm sunny day and hopefully it will stay away although a 60% chance of rain is forecast!

We arrived about 11.00 am and eventually found our free car park at the back of the Airport. After parking and walking a ½ mile to the complimentary school bus ride we get on a bus and are taken to the circuit. Daytona is a 2 mile steeply banked oval and is huge with seating for about a quarter of a million people. Every ticket sells including the tickets from the touts outside the circuit. If you haven’t been before you must get a cushion to sit on as the aluminium seats get a bit hard after a few hours. Every team has a trailer selling goodies including cushions and our friends purchase one each. We get to our seats at about 1.00 pm and start to watch all the pre race show including a live rock show, air display, marching bands and the driver parade.

After the very moving National Anthem was sung the inevitable “Gentlemen start your engines” was proclaimed by the Governor of Florida at 3.00 pm. The Pace car, driven by Tom Cruise of ‘Days of Thunder’ fame, leads the pack round for 2 or 3 laps and the green flag is dropped. The noise is amazing and is similar in volume to being by the side of a Jumbo jet taking off. The sight of 44 odd NASCAR race cars each having over 800 horse power and dashing into turn 1 which is banked at 37 degrees is stunning. For the first 15-20 laps everybody stands up when the cars go past but then the race begins to develop some semblance of order and we are able to watch the race all the way round the circuit on a big, and I mean big, screen TV. The inevitable yellow flags come out every time there is an incident, then every body has to follow Tom Cruise around the track in the Pace car.
We are supporting Juan Pablo Montoya, ex Formula one driver, who this year has gone into team ownership as well as driving and he starts to make good progress but is involved in several incidents and slips back down the field. After several more incidents it starts to get a little cloudy and the spot lights at the track are gradually turned on so that you would not even notice that it was getting dark.

The big crash of the day came between Dale Earnhardt Jr and Brian Vickers coming off turn 2 where we were. The eventual winner was able to pick his way through the pack, which was spinning everywhere, without any damage. Ten or more cars were put out of the race at this time. The inevitable rain brought the Daytona 500 to an early finish and Matt Kenseth was declared the winner after leading only the last green-flag lap of an eventful Sprint Cup series season-opener. Kenseth overtook Elliott Sadler entering turn one to lead the race for the first time all night on lap 146, right before Aric Almirola made contact with Kasey Kahne on the backstretch, bringing out the caution flag for the eighth time during the day. While running behind the pace car, a slight drizzle that had kept teams with an eye on strategy and the weather radar, transformed into a heavy downpour that ended up washing out any chance for Kenseth’s rivals.

Following 20 minutes of waiting under the red flag, the 2003 Sprint Cup champion was declared the winner. Given that the race was past its halfway-mark and with the radar not showing any hope of the rain stopping, NASCAR decided to make the result official after 380 of the scheduled 500 miles.

We now leave the circuit to be taken back to the parking lot by the ubiquitous yellow school bus ready for the journey home. Our friends went home a few days later and then we settled down to relaxing in Florida for another 4 weeks. The Daytona 500 is a great day out for any motor enthusiast.
www.daytonainternationalspeedway.com for details.