Customer Reviews

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

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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.

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.

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

If you like great storytelling you will love this book -- even if you're not a NASCAR fan. It's just a superb non-fiction book, period. One of those real, "I laughed, I cried" things.
This is head and shoulders above any other book ever written about NASCAR, or any kind of racing. And I've read just about all of them.
What great driver's life story do you want? Dale Earnhardt? Richard Petty? Jeff Gordon? Bobby Allison? A.J. Foyt? They're all here. Plus the history of NASCAR, and the whole story of racing at Daytona.
This book goes right to the nitty gritty behind the scenes.
I've got two friends who never even cared about NASCAR before they picked up this book. Now they're hooked.
And I'm buying a copy for every NASCAR fan on my Christmas list.
-- A reader in Mass.

The title basically says it all. This fascinating book uses Daytona International Speedway and the old racing surface of Daytona Beach itself as its lens to focus on the world of NASCAR. Hinton has been a beat reporter covering NASCAR since the mid-1970s and knows all of the old stories and Hinton is able to package them so that the reader is reading one little vignette after another until the history of Daytona is told.

I was reading another book when I picked up this one (a Christmas gift that I hadn't really paid a lot of attention to) and began thumbing through it. I couldn't put it down! It is well-written and at times it is laugh out loud funny, especially if you are a NASCAR fan and are familiar with the older, retired drivers.

However, a couple of disturbing, trivial factual errors throw a negative light on the book as a whole. Two that I noted were Hinton's assertion that no rookie has won the Indy 500 since the 1926 race (in case you're wondering, Daytona Beach used to be used as a high-speed test site, much like Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah is used today and the 1926 winner died making such a high-speed run). I knew that his assertion was wrong since I witnessed rookies win the 2000 race (Juan Montoya) and the 2001 race (Helio Castroneves) - both were well-before publishing time for his book. Besides that, 2 minutes on Google told me there were two others - the 1927 and 1966 winners.

Secondly, he makes the assertion that California driver Willie T. Ribbs was encouraged by the example set by "The Dukes of Hazzard" to get drunk and play chasing games with the police in downtown Charlotte, NC in May of 1978. Since I spent a great deal of my own childhood watching the Dukes, I thought that that seemed a bit early. Sure enough, two more minutes on Google told me that the show premiered in January of 1979, so it really had no part in Ribbs' ill-conceived misadventures. Oddly enough, Ribbs' trip to the drunk tank gave Dale Earnhardt the chance to take his car - his first chance to drive a good car in the Winston Cup Series and this opportunity eventually led him to the career that made him a household name.

Despite these errors the book was a hoot to read and I'm sure I'll be lending it to every NASCAR fan I know.

I've read "From Moonshine to Madison Avenue," "The Wildest Ride," and "The Nascar Way." Those three books are each excellent histories of Nascar and each has its own focus, but apart from the last one listed, their authors don't write exceptionally well. This book by Hinton is in a whole different league, however. The man knows how to write REALLY well - and how to tell and report a story. The stories in this book are much more than good ol' boy anecdotes, although anecdotes are sprinkled into his reporting when they elucidate the point. Personal interviews of a very large number of people who have been prominent in Nascar form a good deal of this book's spine. While its focus is Daytona, it is about quite a bit more than just what has happened at that track.

The book is fairly critical of Nascar - and refreshingly so. ... Well, he maligns a lot of things - as a good reporter should when the subject deserves it. But he also reports the poingant, the tragic, and the triumphant, too, and the book as a whole is remarkably well balanced. If you're looking for a simple public relations fluff piece that blows sunshine [at you] about your favorite driver or Nascar in general, don't buy this book. You will be disappointed and maybe even angry because this book was not written for you. On the other hand, if you are a casual fan, or a dyed-in-the-wool one with an open mind, this book will give you a lot of wonderfully detailed history about Daytona, Nascar, the cars and races, and most important - the people and personalities big and small that have been a part of the show. You will definitely get a good deal of insight about how the facinating circus that is Nascar today has come to be. Buy this book and enjoy!

Mr. Hinton provides a wonderful account of the racing history at Daytona. The book begins with the origins of racing at Daytona in the early 1900s and ends with the 2001 Daytona 500. He describes the morning of the Daytona 500 so elegantly in chapter two, that you can smell the gas and hear the engines. The book covers the early racing on the beaches of Daytona through the creation of NASCAR by Bill France Sr. to the rise of the superstars of racing: Pearson, Petty, Earnhardt and Gordon, to name a few. Also covered are the lesser known stories of the winners of the races at the world center of racing.

It is a very objective look at racing, and at NASCAR in particular. If you want to read the REAL story of America's second most popular sport (behind the NFL), pick up this book. You won't be disappointed.

I have read just about every NASCAR book written and this is the best yet! Great insight into the early days at Daytona. It's easy to tell when the author knows his subject, and Ed Hinton does. HIGHLY RECOMMEDED!!!

The Sports Illustrated reviewer compares this to Hemingway on the subject of dangerous living. I rate it better. This is a towering accomplishment of literary nonfiction. Death in the Afternoon is the only nonfiction work from Hemingway that could remotely compare.
Whether you care about auto racing or not doesn't matter here any more than whether you cared about bull fighting when you read Hemingway. It's the life lessons that matter here.

This is racing, pure, raw, tough, not for sissies or the skittish. If you want one of those ra-ra, golly-gee, wimpo books that have been pouring out lately about NASCAR, then this one is NOT for you.
Really great storytelling, but unvarnished truth. No hero worship here. Profane, brawling, rollicking, hilarious in places, tragic in others.
This one does what none of the new-wave NASCAR books does: it lays out the bad with the good. Warts and all.