From bootleggers to global celebrities.
From racing on the beach to racing in multimillion-dollar racing venues.
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From red dirt to a lot of green.
75 years ago, on Dec. 14, 1947, Bill France Sr. founded NASCAR, signing the founding documents at the Streamline Hotel in Daytona Beach.
Two months later, on Feb. 15, 1948, the first sanctioned NASCAR race was held on the sands of the Daytona Beach Road Course. Eleven years later, the first Daytona 500 was held.
In the 75 years following the founding of NASCAR, the image and the business of stock car racing have changed dramatically.
“When you look at that old school footage, those were cars, essentially, that we’re passenger vehicles just off the road,” said Frank Kelleher, president of Daytona International Speedway. “And they’re slight modifications and now they’re racing…to now the NextGen car. The speeds, the safety of the car. I know, one of that footage shows a car rolling over. I mean, there was no HANS device back then. No five-point seatbelt harness. So I think from the racing product itself, I mean, in 75 years, just leaps and bounds different.”
The business has evolved as well, but it has kept one important tenant: allowing those who are involved to make the decisions on the future of the sport.
“When you look at the list of individuals, I think there were 24 total, including, Mr. France, when they met at The Streamline back in 1947,” Kelleher said. “It was a variety. It was drivers, it was team owners, it was businesspeople, other sanctioning bodies. So it was really a collective group of people deciding the business model, and to where today it’s very much the same. Our leadership, you know, we work with Fox and NBC and with the race teams and with the sponsors, and it is very much community.”
Perhaps no community has been more impacted by NASCAR’s existence over the past 75 years than Daytona. Had France not organized stock car racing where and when he did, Daytona Beach might be a much different place today.
“When you really think about what the France family has done for the greater Volusia County, Central Florida area by having NASCAR headquartered here, and the famed Daytona International Speedway, the world center of racing. This property is busy 365 days a year,” Kelleher said. “So when you think about heads in beds and all the local businesses and restaurants that are getting business and helping us stay alive via the events that are coming here to the world center of racing, right, it all goes back to those beach racing days. And Mr. France column that meeting in 1947.”
For much of NASCAR’s existence, the series followed a predictable schedule, with the same races on the same weekends in the same cities. But over the past five years, that has changed. NASCAR added more road races, including one at Daytona. They shuffled the schedule, ran a race at the LA Coliseum, and recently announced the first street course race to be run in Chicago.
With Formula One seeing a boon in popularity in the United States thanks, in part, to the Netflix documentary that took viewers behind the scenes, NASCAR is also trying to expand its reach. That includes races in Canada and Mexico as well as a series in Europe and Brazil.
“I don’t think we can afford to get comfortable,” Kelleher said. “It is a fast-changing world. There is a lot of competition out there. And we really need to, yes, honor our past and honor our traditions, but we need to be on our toes and looking forward to what could be next.”
So where does NASCAR go in the next 75 years? It is an unanswerable question of course with that long a time horizon, but Kelleher sees a bright future.
“I think we will continue to look around the corner of what could be the next big thing for the sport,” Kelleher said.