Construction NASCAR founder
Bill France Sr. began planning for the track in 1953 as a way to promote the series, which at the time was racing on the
Daytona Beach Road Course. France met with Daytona Beach engineer Charles Moneypenny to discuss his plans for the speedway. He wanted the track to have the highest banking possible to allow the cars to reach high speeds and to give fans a better view of the cars on track. Moneypenny traveled to
Detroit, Michigan to visit the
Ford Proving Grounds which had a high-speed test track with banked corners. Ford shared their engineering design of the track with Moneypenny, providing the needed details of how to transition the pavement from a flat straightaway to a banked corner. France took the plans to the Daytona Beach city commission, who supported his idea and formed the Daytona Beach Speedway Authority. The city commission agreed to lease the parcel of land adjacent to
Daytona Beach Municipal Airport to France's corporation for $10,000 a year over a 50-year period. France then began working on building funding for the project and found support from a
Texas oil millionaire,
Clint Murchison, Sr. Murchison lent France $600,000 along with the construction equipment necessary to build the track. France also secured funding from
Pepsi-Cola,
General Motors designer
Harley Earl, a second mortgage on his home and selling 300,000 stock shares to local residents. Ground broke on construction of the speedway on November 25, 1957. Because of the high water table in the area, the excavated hole filled with water to form what is now known as
Lake Lloyd, named after Joseph "Sax" Lloyd, one of the original six members of the Daytona Beach Speedway Authority. (The lake was stocked with 65,000 fish, and France arranged
speedboat races on it.) 22 tons of
lime mortar had to be brought in to form the track's
binding base, over which
asphalt was laid. Because of the extreme degree of banking, Moneypenny had to come up with a way to pave the incline. He connected the paving equipment to bulldozers anchored at the top of the banking. This allowed the paving equipment to pave the banking without slipping or rolling down the incline. Moneypenny subsequently patented his construction method and later designed
Talladega Superspeedway and
Michigan International Speedway. By December 1958, France had begun to run out of money and relied on race ticket sales to complete construction. When the track opened it was the fastest race track to host a stock car race, until
Talladega Superspeedway opened 10 years later. On April 4, it hosted a
Champ Car event which saw
Jim Rathmann beat
Dick Rathmann and
Rodger Ward, at an average speed of , at the time the fastest motor race ever.
Layouts Tri-oval Daytona's
tri-oval is long with 31° banking in the turns and 18° banking at the start/finish line. The front straight is long and the back straight (or "superstretch") is long. The tri-oval shape was revolutionary at the time as it greatly improved sight lines for fans. It is one of the three tracks on the NASCAR Cup Series circuit that are considered "drafting tracks", the others being
Talladega Superspeedway and
Atlanta Motor Speedway. On July 15, 2010, repaving of the track began. This came almost a year earlier than planned due to the track coming apart during the
2010 Daytona 500. The project used an estimated 50,000 tons of asphalt to repave including the racing surface, apron, skid pads and pit road. Because of good weather, the project was completed ahead of schedule. On October 9, 2013,
Colin Braun drove a
Daytona Prototype car prepared by
Michael Shank Racing to set a single-lap record on the tri-oval configuration of . During NASCAR events, it takes less than a minute for the cars to complete a lap around the tri-oval course.
Road courses While the more famous
24 Hours of Le Mans is held near the
summer solstice, Daytona's endurance race is held in winter (meaning more of the race is run at night). The track's lighting system is limited to 20% of its maximum output for the race to keep cars dependent on their headlights. The road course was built in 1959 and first hosted a three-hour sports car race called the Daytona Continental in 1962. The race length became in 1964, and 1985, the layout was modified, re-profiling road course turns 1 and 2, and moving what is now turn 3 (nicknamed the "International Horseshoe") closer to its preceding turns. Also, the chicane on the backstretch was modified. A new entry leg was constructed approximately earlier, resulting in a longer, three-legged, "bus stop" shape. Cars would now enter in the first leg, bypass the second leg, and exit out of the existing third leg. Passing would now be possible inside the longer chicane. The construction resulted in a final length of for the complete road course. In 2003, the backstretch chicane was modified once again. The middle leg was repaved and widened, and now cars would enter through the first leg, and exit out of the second leg. The existing third leg was abandoned. This allowed cars a cleaner entry into oval turn three. After favorable results, in 2010 the third leg was demolished and removed permanently. In 2005, a second infield road course configuration was constructed, primarily
for motorcycles. Due to fears of tire wear on the banked oval sections, oval turns 1 and 2 were bypassed giving the new course a length of . The Daytona SportBike that runs the Daytona 200 however, uses the main road course except for the motorcycle
Pedro Rodríguez Hairpin (tighter than the one used for cars; the car version is used as an acceleration lane for motorcycles). On September 26 and 27, 2006, the
IndyCar Series held a compatibility test on the 10-turn, modified road course, and the 12-turn motorcycle road course with 5 drivers. The drivers who tested at the track were
Vítor Meira,
Sam Hornish Jr.,
Tony Kanaan,
Scott Dixon and
Dan Wheldon. This marked the first time since 1984 that open wheel cars have taken to the track at Daytona. On January 31 – February 1, 2007, IndyCar returned for a full test involving 17 cars. On July 8, 2020, NASCAR announced that it would race the Daytona road course in all of its national series for the first time in mid-August, due to current
COVID-19 pandemic health restrictions in
New York state (requiring 14 days self-isolation on arrival from other states) preventing the use of
Watkins Glen International. On July 30, a modification of the course to add a chicane near the exit of Turn 12 (Oval Turn Four) was announced, lengthening the course to . On January 21, 2024,
Pipo Derani set the fastest ever recorded lap of the modern Daytona road course, with a 1:32.656 driving a
Cadillac V-Series.R during qualifying for the
2024 24 Hours of Daytona. During the same session, every entrant in the
IMSA GTP class broke the course lap record previously set by
Oliver Jarvis in a
Mazda RT24-P in 2019.
Supercross During
Daytona Beach Bike Week, a supercross track is built between the pit road and the tri-oval section of the track. Historically the track has used more sand than dirt, providing unique challenges to riders. The 2008–2013 track configurations were designed by former champion,
Ricky Carmichael. Daytona has hosted an
AMA Supercross Championship round uninterruptedly since 1971.
Flat track and infield kart track Popular dirt-track races in karting and flat-track motorcycle racing had been held at
Daytona Beach Municipal Stadium but in 2009, the city announced the stadium was replacing its entire surface with
FieldTurf, and thereby eliminating the flat-track racing at the stadium. To continue racing, speedway officials built the Daytona Flat Track, a new quarter-mile dirt track outside of turns 1 & 2 of the main superspeedway. It seats 5,000 in temporary grandstands and opened in December 2009 for WKA KartWeek. From 2010 to 2016, it also hosted the
AMA Grand National Championship, before it was moved in 2017 to the tri-oval section and became a TT course. There is also a short paved kart/autocross track in the infield just inside of turn 3. The
SCCA holds autocross on this track in addition to hosting sprint karting races during KartWeek.
Paved short track In February 2012, it was announced that a paved
short track would be constructed along the backstretch of the Speedway's main course, for NASCAR's lower series to compete at during Speedweeks called the
UNOH Battle at the Beach, which is similar to the
Toyota All-Star Showdown, formerly held at
Irwindale Speedway. The first races were held on that track in February 2013. The track was shortened to a oval in 2014 by shorter straightaways. The future of racing at the short track became uncertain after 2015 with the grandstands on the back straightaway being demolished as a part of the Daytona Rising project.
Football In the fall of 1959, the track hosted several high school football games for the
Father Lopez Green Wave in the first year of the school's football program. The track hosted four
college football games featuring the Daytona-based
Bethune–Cookman Wildcats in 1974 and 1975. In early 2014 track president Joie Chitwood expressed a desire to bring football back to the track.
Soccer On July 2 and 3, 2022, the track hosted Daytona Soccer Fest, a 2-day event highlighted by a friendly match between
heated Colombian rivals América de Cali and
Deportivo Cali and a
NWSL regular season match between the
Orlando Pride and
Racing Louisville FC. ==Video games==