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    50th Anniversary of the Daytona Continental
 on the 3.56 mile Daytona Speedway Road Course

Dateline January 17, 2012

Report by Jeff Daniels
Photos by Daniel Parsons

Automobile racing in Daytona Beach, Florida probably began around 1903 on the actual sand beach.  Fifteen land speed records were set on the sands of Daytona Beach.  The final record was set on March 7, 1935, when Malcolm Campbell achieved a speed of 276.816 mph in his famous Blue Bird racer.  Two years later the land speed records moved to the Bonneville Salt Flats  where Campbell and the Blue Bird recorded the first 300 mph with a a speed of 301.199 mph.



In 1936, Daytona Beach officials asked local racer Sig Haugdahl to organize and promote an automobile race that included both pavement and the sand beach.  Haugdahl is given credit for designing the original course that started on the pavement of highway A1A and went south parallel to the ocean  to the point where the road ended.  At the end of the pavement drivers turned onto the actual sand beach and ran North to the starting point where it turned back onto the pavement.  The original length of the track was 3.2 miles and in the late 1940s the track was lengthened to 4.2 miles. When the ticket takers arrived at the track, they found several thousand fans already at the track.  The sandy turns became virtually impassible and caused numerous scoring disputes and technical protests and the race was stopped after 75 of the 78 lap race length were completed.  Milt Marion was declared the winner of the event.  Both the second and third place finishers protested the results but their appeal was overturned.  Bill France Sr. who moved to Daytona Beach in 1935 to escape the great depression and established ,a car repair shop, finished 5th.  The city which posted a purse of
 $ 5,000 lost $ 22,000 on the race and never promo...

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Fuji Speedway

Dateline January 10, 2012

Report by Jeff Daniels
Photos by Daniel Parsons

Fuji Speedway is a motorsport road course located in the foothills of Mount Fuji, Japan. 
The Speedway was constructed in the early 1960s and hosted the first Formula One race in Japan in 1976.  In the 1980s, Fuji was one of the sites selected to host a FIA World Sportcar Championship race.  It has also been the site of numerous national racing events similar to the national amateur races conducted by the Sports Car Club of America. 



The Fuji Speedway Corporation was established in 1963 as the Japan NASCAR Corporation and obviously that influenced the naming of the facility.  In early circuit planning the track was intended to host NASCAR type races.  The original plan was to construct a 4 km (2.5 mile) high banked oval super speedway.  However, supporters quickly learned that it would be far more expensive to construct the oval than to construct a road circuit.  In fact, this discovery was made so early in the planning stages that only one of the banked corners was ever constructed.

Mitsubishi Estate Company invested in the project and took on the management responsibilities in October of 1965.  The redesigned road course opened in December of 1965 and proved to be dangerous with the banked turn regularly being the location of major motorsport accidents.

Vic Elford recalls being employed by Toyota in 1969 doing a test contract for the Toyota 7 (a 5 liter V8) destined to be used in the Can AM series in North America.   He writes:  "My last testing and then the subsequent Sports Car GP were at Fuji running the track in a clockwise direction.  The reason that banking was so horrific, was that at the end of the straight we went over a blind crest at around 190/200 MPH and dropped into the banking.  At other tracks such as Daytona,...

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Zandvoort In the Snow

Dateline January 3, 2012

Report by Jeff Daniels
Photos by Daniel Parsons

Circuit Park Zandvoort is a motorsport race track in the dunes north of the town of Zandvoort, in theNetherlands, near the North Sea coast line.  The first race on public roads was conducted on June 3, 1939.   Plans for a permanent race track were put on hold after the occupation of the Netherlands by German armed forces.  In 1946, the first permanent layout was constructed using communication roads built by the occupying German army.

The circuit was inaugurated on August 7, 1948.  Although the races held on the track were called Grand Prix races, the first Formula One Grand Prix counting toward the World Championship was held in 1955.  After two years without a race the Dutch GP was back on the championship calendar in 1958.  With the exception of 1972, the Dutch Grand Prix was on the World Championship calendar until 1985 when it was held for the last time.



Seeking to develop and upgrade the facility and to solve the noise pollution issue for residents of the part of Zandvoort that was closest to the track, track management developed a plan to move the most southern part of the track away from the housing development and to rebuild a more compact track on the remaining former "infield".  In January 1987, this plan received the green light from the Provincial Council.  A couple of months later, the company that ran the facility went out of business marking the end of "Circuit van Zandvoort".  At this point, the track which was owned by the municipality of Zandvoort was once more in danger of being permanently lost to motorsports.  A new operating company was formed and started work on the track's reconstruction plans.  Circuit Park Zandvoort was born and in the summer of 1989 the track was remodeled to an interim Club circuit of 2.6 km (...

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 ROAD AMERICA IN THE SNOW

Dateline December 20, 2011

Report by Jeff Daniels
Photos by Daniel Parsons

Road America is a natural terrain road course located near Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin midway between Milwaukee and Green Bay.  It is situated on 640 acres in Wisconsin's Kettle Moraine.  The 14 turn,  4.048 mile (6.515 km) track is one of only a few tracks in the world that has kept its original configuration.  The track features many elevation changes and a long front straight where speeds approach 200 mph.



Road racing came to Elkhart Lake in 1950 when the Chicago Region Sports Car Club of America and the village of Elkhart Lake organized a race using existing roads to create a course of 3.3 miles.  This course is now on the National Register of Historic Places and signs have been posted marking key locations on the course.  The Start/Finish line was on County Road P.  The track went north to County Road J, then south into the village of Elkhart Lake and west on what is now County JP (then called County Highway X) and reconnected with County P.  In 1951 and 1952, the course was changed.  It was 6.5 miles (10.5 km) in length on County Roads, J, A, and P.  Most of these configurations can still be driven today.

After the 1952 tragedy at Watkins Glen where a child was killed, the federal government ruled to discontinue motorized contests of speed on public highways.  This did not end permanently stop road racing, but shifted to permanent private facilities.

The vision of Road America grew out of the dreams of Clift Tufte, a civil engineer who spent almost a year designing the course.  In April 1955, Tufte's dream was carved out of 525 acres of Wisconsin farmland.  In September of that same year, the first race was held on the new circuit.  Currently, over 400 events are held at the facility.

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