Beach Bliss

You used to hear the engines roar over Daytona Beach surf.

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The roar of engines used to drown out the rumbling surf.

To hear most members of the motorsports media talk about it, Daytona Speedweeks is nothing but a hassle.

It lasts two weeks. The traffic is bad. The hotels are hit and miss. The lines at dinner every night are long. There are nearly twice as many media credentials distributed as there used to be, which means twice as many people to wrestle with for soundbites and quotes. It's a mess.

By the time the Great American Race finally takes the green flag, the residents of the crowded infield media center are simply anxious to get it all over with and head home…but then everyone starts griping about having to jump on planes to Fontana and Vegas. Every year the noise gets so loud that it makes me want to go get a four-by-four and start rearranging the room like The Rock did in Walking Tall.

So every year since 1994 I have picked one morning to avoid the racetrack altogether, to get in my rental car and drive away for a little "me time" to gather my thoughts and tap back into the magic that has led us all to Daytona in the first place.

I go to the beach.

I roll down the windows of my rent-a-ride and putter along at the mandated speed of 10 mph. I listen to the surf and the gulls and I cruise nearly as far south as the police will let me, all the way to what used to be the South Turn of the old 4.1-mile Daytona Beach and Road Course.

If you know where to look, there are still a couple of wooden posts that protrude from the dunes, the last remnants of what used to be a towering wooden grandstand and a rough hewn flag stand.

If you know where to look, there are still a couple of wooden posts that protrude from the dunes, the last remnants of what used to be a towering wooden grandstand and a rough hewn flag stand. To the left and right are massive beach houses, skyscraper condo towers and hotels. Sixty years ago, there was just sea grass and empty dunes.

This was the place where, for a decade, a group of farmers, World War II veterans, mechanics and moonshiners used to come barreling down Highway A1A and then, their tires screaming on the asphalt, would whip their rides to the left and bounce onto the sand of the beach. Before that, daredevils from around the world came to the "World's Most Famous Beach" to set land speed records and non-sanctioned events involving cars, trucks, and motorcycles were cobbled together every winter.

For the stock car races of 1949-58, the dunes between the beach and road were covered with curious spectators. The beach itself was lined with their cars, tucked back against the hills to give the racers enough room to fly up the beach between the makeshift parking lot and the water of low tide. Some of the fans had paid a few bucks for a ticket, but most had simply crawled over the temporary fencing for the very reasonable price of free.

Roaming those dunes to futilely collect cash from the invaders was a young boy named Bill France Junior. His father had organized these races and organized the sanctioning body. Bill Junior, still 25 years from taking over the league himself, soon figured out a way to force fans through the gates where tickets were sold. He made up some signs that read "WARNING! SNAKES!" and placed them throughout the places where the fences had been breached.

Ryan McGee

The speeds are a little slower these days.

Every February I like to get out of my car and stand on what is left of the dunes by what is now an entrance ramp for street cars to enter the beach from A1A. I crane my neck to look back to the north, envisioning guys like Milt Marion, Marshall Teague and Harold Kite weaving their way through sandy potholes and sending rooster tails of sand spraying twenty feet into the air.

I think about Red Byron and his leg that was mangled when his bomber was shot down over the Aleutian Islands of the North Pacific. Afraid his foot would keep slipping off the clutch, he bolted his leg brace to the pedal. Had he gotten caught in a crash, the bolt would have kept him from escaping. He could have cared less. Besides, he won the race anyway.

I think about Junior Johnson flipping his massive Ford end over end in the North Turn, climbing out of the car and making a run for it, horrifying fans as he leapt and dodged traffic while wearing nothing but a t-shirt and khakis.

I envision Curtis Turner's legendary beach broad slide, which he started a good quarter-mile up the beach before entering the turn, and Bill France Senior taking time off from his presidential duties to don a pair of welder's goggles for some racing himself.

In 1998 I sat and talked with Tim Flock just a few weeks before his death. His eyes glistened when I asked him about racing on the beach. He won the Beach and Road race in 1955 and '56 in his legendary Chrysler 300. But all he could talk about were birds.

"We made the parade lap and there about 200 seagulls just standing there in the water, watching us go by like they were race fans," the 73-year old said with a laugh. "The next time we came around we jumped in the gas, you know. I was on the pole, so I was the first one out onto the beach, running up front at 135 miles per hour. The fans were cheering and there was an Air Force jet flyover and I ran through a little bit of that ocean water and it started spraying and it was coolest thing I'd ever seen. But the birds hadn't gotten out of the way. Right in the middle of all that beauty, those damn birds started hitting the windshield and exploding like they were grenades. I couldn't see a thing for all the feathers and the guts!"

As he told the story, Flock laughed so hard he started to cry.

This year, like every year, I will go down to the South Turn to get away from the complaining of the media center and the corporate white noise. And once again, if I close my eyes and listen hard enough, I can hear the racecars. And I can hear Tim Flock's laugh.

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