Daytona: From the Birth of Speed to the Death of the Man in Black [Hardcover]

Ed Hinton (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 21, 2001

Twenty times Dale Earnhardt had tried. Nineteen times he'd failed, often astoundingly, sometimes magnificently. And so it was an old man in Earnhardt's car in Victory Lane, fifty years to the day after the first NASCAR race on the sands of Daytona Beach. The cobalt eyes were weary. The hard face was ashen, suddenly lined with wrinkles beyond his forty-six years.

Now it was as if all the sorrow of those nineteen losses had deluged him at once. Virtually every member of every team had lined up to slap hands with him as he drove by. It was the most monumental salute in the history of American motor racing.

Earnhardt drove into the infield grass in front of the pit road, and across the enormous painted word "Daytona," he did the most artistic "doughnuts" ever by a victor-he spun and whirled his car until the tires gouged out of the grass a gigantic "3" in earthen colors. And then in Victory Lane all the heartbreak came in one last crashing wave...

For a generation Ed Hinton has been witness to what may be the most truly American sport of all. Once loved by those mostly living south of the Mason-Dixon line, NASCAR has captured the imagination of an entire nation. Television ratings are skyrocketing, and names like Jeff Gordon and the late Dale Earnhardt are part of the American fabric. Now, after years of covering heart-stopping races, gasoline alley power struggles, and family feuds, Hinton delivers the book on racing that America has been waiting for...

DAYTONA

Hinton takes us on a full-throttle history of Daytona from the days when well-healed daredevils and tycoons held speed contests on the beach to Daytona's eventual overthrow of the Indy 500 as America's premier racing event. Along the way he chronicles the personal side of the sport, including the rise and fall of "the King," Richard Petty, the tragic dynasty of the Allison family, the rags-to-riches story of Dale Earnhardt, and some of the sport's most vicious, on- and off-the-track rivalries-among racers, owners, crew chiefs, and carmakers themselves.

With finely etched prose, Hinton straps us into a state-of-the-art racing machine to experience unimaginable power held with a feathery touch, while waging the nerve-racking war for space, speed, and track. He takes us through the garage area on a Daytona 500 morning, where cars "like monstrous patients in intensive care" are given final tunings by specialists and the air shudders with the sound of unmufflered engines reaching RPMs that would explode your family car. And he takes us into those moments that stay in the mind forever: moments of split-second victory or defeat, moments of unbelievable skill and courage, and, tragically, moments of death.

Ultimately, DAYTONA is a story about people: fathers and sons; teammates and competitors; the visionary who invented the sport, Big Bill France; the boy genius Jeff Gordon, who overthrew the Intimidator, Dale Earnhardt; those speed demons like Willie K. Vanderbilt, Fireball Roberts, and Junior Johnson, who came along long before Daytona and NASCAR became household names. Big, brawling, colorful, and smart-every bit as exciting as the sport itself, DAYTONA does for racing what The Boys of Summer did for baseball-and will stand as a classic in its own right.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Journalist and NASCAR fan Hinton accelerates along 70 years of raceway history in a volume that bonds track groupies, folk-genius mechanics, paraplegics, NASCAR martyrs, AIDS, drugs, overnight millionaires, generational rivalries and family feuds at 200 mph into a coherent tale for the sport's dedicated and growing fan base. Hinton has had plenty of practice explaining auto racing culture to America for the last 25 years, first for Sports Illustrated and now for the Tribune News Services. After all, he was there "when NASCAR stirred as a sleeping titan of inexplicably charismatic appeal to the mainstream, when it flexed and stretched and went to finishing school and headed relentlessly uptown." Hinton manages to contain all the local color, roaring noise and background forces social, economic, and otherwise in a choppy but continuously attractive story. This is Daytona Speedway not as a structure of concrete and rubber but as a sort of roaring motorsport Mount Olympus, "the carotid artery through which nearly every essential element of motorsports has passed through at one time or another." Some elements pass through more loudly and colorfully than others; historical accounts of speed trials on the beach at Daytona in the 1920s and '30s, for example, may not excite today's spectators. The names and stories that stick are NASCAR names of the last 20 years: "man of the people" Richard Petty, tough guy Cale Yarborough and the late hero, Dale Earnhardt. Hinton's vignettes are sharp and his connections are exciting, split-second glimpses of NASCAR culture. (Nov. 21)Forecast: Yet another to be placed on the swelling NASCAR shelves and one that will sell nevertheless.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Essential reading for NASCAR auto-racing fans, this is a narrative history of Daytona, long a home to speed, racing, and the Daytona 500-mile race, a premiere auto racing event. Since 1903, when straight-line speed runs began on the beach, Daytona has been a hallowed place for racers, and winning the Daytona 500 has been a grail for them. Hinton, a widely known sportswriter and commentator who has covered auto racing for more than two decades, provides a wealth of detail about Daytona's history and the numerous luminaries who have been a part of racing there. In doing so, he also provides a history of NASCAR itself, retelling its origins in the moonshine trade and recalling many of the legends and legendary events of NASCAR. Hinton writes with eloquence and passion, and his narrative approach makes readers feel that they have encountered a collection of related stories with results that are entertaining and yet informative. Many of Hinton's anecdotes allow readers to see more of the personal and human side of the drivers, who are largely television images, although some of his portrayals are not at all flattering. Highly recommended for public libraries. David Van de Streek, Pennsylvania State Univ. Libs., York
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Warner Books; First edition. edition (November 21, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0446526770
• ISBN-13: 978-0446526777
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,242,614 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars By far, the best book on NASCAR, period., November 12, 2001

By 

"sportsguy1" (Dallas, TX USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Daytona: From the Birth of Speed to the Death of the Man in Black (Hardcover)

Nothing comes close, actually. I've been waiting for this for a long time, because Ed Hinton is simply the best writer on motor sports there is, and I really miss him in "Sports Illustrated." Anyway, this is even better than I hoped. It's simply a great book, regardless of the subject. If you're an old-time NASCAR fan, you'll love the close-ups of all the great drivers and characters, because they're all here, and no one knows more inside stuff about them than Hinton. If you're a newcomer to the sport, this will make you understand what all the fuss is about, because Hinton does here for NASCAR what Tom Wolfe did for the space program in "The Right Stuff," and--get ready for this--he's as good a writer as Wolfe. Yes, he's that good. His description of a race morning at Daytona near the end of the book will make your hairs stand on end. It's worth the price of the book itself. And his analysis of the Dale Earnhardt fiasco is penetrating, because Hinton was the guy behind the Orlando Sentinel's fight to obtain the autopsy photos, so he should know .

Just a great book, and one of the best sports books I've ever read.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Strong History of Daytona Racing - and Some of NASCAR, too, May 13, 2002

By 

Winslow Bunny "Winslow_Bunny" (Rockledge, Florida United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Daytona: From the Birth of Speed to the Death of the Man in Black (Hardcover)

Having read a good many books about NASCAR of yesterday and today, I was fairly prepared to read the same stories about the same drivers concerning the same incidents: a rehashing of books from the past. I am happy to say that I was very wrong about Ed Hinton's book. There is the history of Daytona speed that goes back a century, which the author covers quite well; the history of the beginnings of NASCAR, which the author not only brings to life (and light, specifically in its moonshining roots) but adds new information - I had read the bare facts of the death of Lloyd Seay before, but the author gives us more to go on concerning his demise. Then there is the body of the book, a look at each year's Daytona 500 and its winner. Hinton does an excellent job of blending in the race with the driver's personality; one can empathize with Donnie Allison and how one moment in time led to a downward spiral in his career, a moment not completely of his own making. One can feel for Darrell Waltrip and the changes brought to his career - and how his changes brought him his only Daytona 500 win. Then there is the last part of the book, centering on Dale Earnhardt. The author and Earnhardt were once close friends but at this time cooler towards each other; the author explores this last race down to the last lap and the multitude of circumstances that occurred to cause the death of Earnhardt. The author researched head-and-neck injuries with three of the top people in this field in an effort to write knowledgably about this subject, and he accomplished that mission. Ed Hinton has written an absorbing story of the quest for speed, the track and the personalities - and the organization behind these three ingredients - and his book is one not to be missed by NASCAR fans.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sir Malcomb don't need no stinkin' restrictor plates, March 18, 2005

By 

Thomas J. Burns (Apopka, Florida USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Daytona: From the Birth of Speed to the Death of the Man in Black (Hardcover)

My guess is that even the locals here would tell you that the relationship between the Daytona area and automobile engineering began with the primitive stock jalopies dueling on the beach in the late 1930's. They need to go back further. A full century ago the Daytona-Ormond region was noted for style. Not exactly Charleston, SC, perhaps, but a place where the rich and famous wintered thanks to excellent rail service. Among these winter guests were industrialists who could not sit still for four months waiting for the fish to bite. With the invention and development of the combustible engine, the Atlantic beach became for a time America's test track.

Author Ed Hinton is best known as a longtime beat reporter for modern day stock car racing, but his research into the early days of Daytona motorsports is surprisingly good. As early as 1903 an annual winter racing festival was established, fueled by both the daring of a new breed of test drivers and the research and development interests of major auto manufacturers. This was long before the empowerment of any official sanctioning body; templates and restrictor plates were unheard of. The conditions and the technology favored racing the clock, and by the time Wilbur and Orville had reached flight further up the coast, test drivers were pushing the 100mph envelope at the Daytona-Ormond city line.

Curiously, the greatest day of Daytona beach racing was in a sense its death knell. There would be a limit as to how much traction could be generated by sand and rubber, and in 1933 Sir Malcolm Campbell--in a hair-raising exhibition-discovered that dangerous point. He stretched his Bluebird to the unthinkable speed of 330 mph along the beach track, then turned around to complete the required stretch for an official world record. At 300mph he lost control of his car but--in what must have been one of the greatest maneuvering feats ever--recovered the car and finished the run. He was also finished with the unpredictability of Atlantic beach conditions, and he joined the exodus to the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah.

One of the heart-pounding spectators of this feat was one William France. A good mechanic and a part-time Saturday night racer in the Washington, DC suburbs, France was also something of a social philosopher on the subject of racing. He discovered among other things that many promoters were dishonest, that good engines were not generally available to the driver of average means like himself, and that in the unregulated world of local racing, there was no protection for individual competitors. And though he probably never tasted moonshine whiskey, he was not so puritanical as to ignore the skill and technology of "moonshine transporters."

With the emigrations to Utah and Indiana of big name drivers, the Depression-ravaged Daytona area was open to about any money making idea, though France's first beachfront stock car races in the late 1930's were not exactly bonanzas. As a promoter France discovered that drivers cheated as often as management, and his conviction deepened for the need of a powerful sanctioning body. After the war hiatus, France was enough of a force to create NASCAR in 1947 with himself, not surprisingly, as its not so benevolent dictator. He had a knack for getting ahead of parades that had started without him-Harold Brasington's daring 1.3 mile super-speedway at Darlington, SC in 1949, and the concept of the 500 mile race at a time when no one knew if a stock car could actually do that. When by 1955 he saw that both concepts were eminently successful, and developers were clamoring for Daytona beachfront sites, France set in motion the construction of today's 2.5-mile super-speedway, where the inaugural race was held in February 1959.

By this point in his history Hinton is now in the world of races he himself attended with drivers he knew intimately well. Daytona is only one of at least twenty sanctioned tracks in stock car's senior circuit, and the second half of this work is the story of the "annual visits," through which we see the development, the glory years, and the declines of the great ones of the modern era. In his introduction the author notes that his book was almost finished at the time of Earnhardt's death during the final lap of the 2001 Daytona 500. While he describes that race with particular emphasis upon the Earnhardt tragedy, it does not appear that he extensively reworked his text in light of the accident. Translate: the Intimidator wasn't "cleaned up" for posterity.

But because of his closeness to this generation of drivers, Hinton cannot quite contain himself to the Daytona scene. There are great stories to be told, rivalries probed, genuinely funny incidents that occurred many miles from Daytona that spice the second half of the work. I have to admit that many of these tales we've heard before-though here we get them in the uncensored quotes of sources like Darrell Waltrip. Because he writes well, and because he does justice to the recent Daytona races, Hinton can be forgiven his repetitions and diversions. Moreover, his coverage of issues involving driver safety in recent years is evidence that, in the tradition of old Bill France, he has given a lot of thought to this sport